Chapel Orahamm's Blog, page 30

Book Review: The Shield Road | The Silent Stones

Welcome back. Welcome back. Glad to see you’re here and ready for the next short story review from The Shield Road by Dewi Hargreaves.

Today, we’re looking at The Silent Stones. Let’s see what this little tale is about.

Ah, we’re back to the flowers from the Tomb story. Interesting. Very interesting. And short too. A fascinating give and take on the idea of long held memories. The longer the memory, or memories, the shorter the story. The more you have to want to know. The instances take pages, the years take seconds.

We’re still in the historic period feel, but we’ve turned more towards the concept of The Giver with memories here.

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Anime Cinema Friday: Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle

This was cute.

This was super cute. And so gratifying at the same time. More often then not I get a shade wary of anything that looks like a lolicon trap. It’s just a build up for disappointing flat characters who are exploited for that weird child-like look and just grossed out shivers.

This is not that. No. No it is not.

This is something that flits along the lines of chaotic good, chaotic neutral, and chaotic evil and I loved it. Princess gets kidnapped by a demon king and ends up in a dungeon castle.

She isn’t scared though. Just thoroughly annoyed at being put through “rough treatment”. Think a chaotic version of The Princess and The Pea. This princess will straight up go and find her own solutions to a more comfortable sleep. Scratchy pillow? Hello defluffing some animals. Sometimes sentient blanket monsters end up getting slashed to ribbons so she can sleep on sparkly sheets. Sometimes she goes and steals a scary over the top glowing sword so that she can have a bit of a circadian rhythm kick to get better sleep.

The demon king’s castle is in chaos. Yet, all the monsters slowly develop a fondness for her shenanigans. She, I wouldn’t say she has Stockholme syndrome or anything of the sort, will forceably fix her problem and is more demon than the demons in the castle.

If there is any sense of romantic build up, it is super small and more a one sided thing. If I had to say it, I think the demon king develops a crush on her, and I’m making assumptions, but I think the princess is ace. She’s supposedly in that 17-18 year age bracket if I remeber, but I’m a bit waffly on that memory. Like, there is no motivation in any of her actions other than to return her to a state of peacefully sleeping equilibrium with any of her actions throughout the entire story.

Definitely worth watching if you’re needing slapstick humor without fear for the emotional wellbeing of the characters. Nothing in this is malicious for the sake of psych-horror or anything.

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Book Review: The Phantom of the Opera | Gaston Leroux

Within the Writing Community on Twitter, there comes days called PitchMad, or Pitch Madness, where people try to, in one tweet, pitch their book and score an agent to represent them to a publishing company, there by becoming a traditionally published author.

When this event happens, people tend to pitch their books starting with a pair of tags such as: Wheel of Time x The Game of Thrones, It x Jurassic Park, etc. etc.

One of the books that I saw go up several times last year on the tags was Phantom of the Opera. Hence, my interest in checking out the little mobile game I did a review on. I have never seen the movie, play, or read the book up until now. I had some vague concept of a deformed individual seducing a singer, and that was pretty much it for my understanding of the story line.

Some days, it is significantly better to remain disillusioned on a topic.

I have a couple books in my reading pile that claim to have been “loosely” based on Phantom of the Opera. Realizing that I had no background on the content save for a couple hours on a game, I decided it would be advantageous to read the original text in translation – sorry, I don’t understand French well enough to read the original – so as to not be overly critical upon reviews in the future pertaining to this particular theme.

The author, Leroux, sounds like an amateur writing a mash up between Edgar Allen Poe and Sir Arthur Connan Doyle, two authors I am particular to in writing style, though leery of as I learn more and more about particular elements of racism contained specifically in Poe’s works.

Effectively, I rather enjoy the textual style, but find elements within lacking. To gain information upon the characters and implied relationships I had gleaned from the game app is to step into a realm of stalkers, gaslighters, manipulators, and a bizarrely fantastical delusion of what is now knows as an “incel”. I.E. – the phantom is a male human who’s never known affection and is taking this failing out on everyone. He is too intelligent for his own good, has become a rampant murderer, and gets what he wants through any means necessary and currently has his sights set on the MC.

The female MC of this has been through the wringer, has very little self confidence, and in general has a cast of abusers flocking around her at any given time. She really just needs to leave.

The “knight in shining armor” Raoul who takes her away from the Phantom in the end is…sigh. Where to begin with stalker boy. The Phantom’s bad. Raoul hasn’t turned into a full blown murder house designer, but he’s still in that realm of not understanding personal boundaries, and in general, treating Christine as nothing more than an idolized golden doll to be displayed on a pedestal and the fact she has any thoughts or feelings is secondary to having her.

She’s a tug-of-war toy between two jerks. One’s just a murderous psychopath living in his sewer dungeon house and the other is a Naval officer – which boarders along the line of ‘murderous psychopath living in his floating dungeon house’. Congrats Christine, which *hole do you want to marry?

This book is a facepalm all the way around. The two male mains aren’t redeemable. The female main is stuck between bad decisions. The only thing this has going for it is a bit of an interesting writing style presentation for the time period it was written in and you’ve just ran out of all the good Sherlock Holmes books.

Suggest it? Meh. Go watch an explanation of the thing on Youtube. It’ll save you a lot of time and frustration.

I can only say, in knowing I have books in my review list ‘loosely’ based on PotO, that I really hope they are not this horrible manipulation abuse relationship thing.

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Mobile Game Review: Murder in the Alps

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I’m beginning to wonder about stereotypes a bit more than my social psychology and social theories classes taught me. This particular game is well thought out. Well laid out. The graphics are excellent for an in-ad game. I would expect this to easily be something I could play on PC. It honestly reminds me of a very old Nancy Drew PC game I used to play as a kid. I did not get too far in that game. Some of the puzzles were so convoluted.

Here, the game is set in the Swiss Alps in the late 1920s early 1930s. The Art Deco fashion is fun. I was having an issue for a bit with the fact the characters switch in between English and German for certain words – ladies and gentleman and such. I was feeling like some of the characters were type caste because of it. Switching between English and German should make sense. I’m just trying to be more sensitive to if people are value pandering or virtue signaling with diversity and doing it badly. I think I probably jumped at this one and was just being too sensitive.

The story goes from interactive to back and forth conversations done up in a comic book style. The conversation bubbles pop up into fitted margins between character images which is not something I’ve seen done yet, and I rather like that presentation style.

Now, the puzzle aspect of the game. You have “energy” reserves that you have to give time to recharge. Sometimes you can get free energy during week deals, which is frequent enough to keep you coming back. I’ve had the game on my phone for a few weeks now and have watched the notifications pop up one to two times daily about deals or energy or what have you. That might be annoying to some people, so, thought I’d mention that up front.

Within the games, you spend a bit of energy though, and you can lose track of how much you spend because the energy bar is off hidden in a left hand hamburger menu. Keeps visual distractions to a minimum, but you can burn through energy quickly if you aren’t getting the idea with the game and keep asking it for hints.

This is a Hidden Picture game set up. There are some other mini-games, but the main premise is that you are presented with a room or a corner of a room where you get to look at a jumbled mess of trinkets and try to find a set of them on a list. If the word is in white, the item is in frame. If the word in the list is red, it is hidden behind or in something and you have to figure out where a lock or a latch are. This doesn’t appear bad right out the gate. However, you can go poking at a screen all day trying to figure out what is moveable and it still not be obvious. Some things look like you should be able to open them or move them and they are non-interactive, where as other pieces don’t look interactive and instead are and the only way to figure that out is through hints. (At least, in my case).

It’s not like watching old Hana-Barbera cartoons with cell shading where you know the set of rocks the teenage sluths climbed up are going to fall down because they are a flat color compared to the “background” rocks that are all moss covered, etc. The clues in Murder in the Alps are sometimes terribly subtle.

I like the premise of the story line, in so far as it comes off as most any noir detective novel or Agathe Christi mystery style book does. So far, less racist, which is a blessing. I can’t stand reading Agathe Christi. I’ve tried, and each one is just down right disparaging. I know, I know “product of the time,” etc. etc. Doesn’t mean they still need to be in print.

I haven’t made it into “chapter 2” of the game yet. I was playing what I could of the start up to see if the energy recharge rate was fair to the user or if it was money hungry like Genius Otome games is.

For the most part, I’d call it a decently set up system.

The only thing I can say that started getting on my nerves, and this has to do with a conversation I had with a friend earlier in the month about women perpetually being sent off to the work kitchen to fetch all the men coffee and how that is demeaning and sexist. Well, here is a female MC who is a reporter with a penchant for mysteries. There’s plenty of space to explore, and yet the game is set up with just enough of a rail that it will lock down explorable scenes whenever someone sends you off to find a magnifying glass, someone’s umbrella, or a knife by which to pry the door open. Again, doesn’t sound bad at the outset, but the level of frequency the MC is sent off to the kitchen and else where to fetch things while the men occupy the various murder rooms trying to figure out what happened is…bugging me…at the moment.

Would I suggest it? Yes, I think I would. The art, interactions, and story line are all decent. It might live on my phone a bit longer as I play with it until I hit enough of a road block that I don’t want to sink money into it. It’s just frustrating enough that I don’t actually want to spend money on it to play because of the sheer need for hints, but as long as the energy maintenance time is free and I have other things to occupy my time, it’s okay to freeload some space.

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Book Review: Struggling with the Current | A.R.K. Horton

Oh. Mid- range fantasy. I’ve just recently learned that there is such a thing as high, mid, and low fantasy. High fantasy is something like The Lord of the Rings, where as low fantasy might be something like a Spy x Family with the Esper girl. Just slightly fantasy.

I’m going with mid fantasy for the moment as I get through the prologue and chapter one and start meeting the characters. Different time, different place, learning about political structure and the MC being stuck between being her parents’ pawn and desperately wanting out of the whole heirarchical system. I’m currently in somewhere around Akatsuki no Yona crossed over with some other female led isekai anime. Sometimes YA, or grammar-style YA makes these types of stories more palatable to someone who cannot put forth the effort to deep dive the Wheel of Time series for a review (I’m avoiding, have you noticed?)

*also, the telltale sign of a bunch of names relatively unfamiliar to the expected contemporary literature field and possible impossible to pronounce without tripping on your own tongue* I mean, standard practice really. It would be weird to have a completely different country/planet/etc. with characters named Sarah or John or Tyrel, if you know what I mean.

It reads like young adult for adults – contains a few elements that are for a more mature audience while providing the familiarity of a court intrigue world build expected from writers like Tamora Pierce. The standard practice of a world at war, a power hungry villain, a few well placed friends, and a coming-into-her-power MC.

The detail in the settings is not overpowering. Sometimes world building can go beyond necessary, especially when a story isn’t dialogue heavy. This one is balanced cleanly between dialogue and observed elements.

Some headjumping takes place where we switch from character emotions to a different character’s internal emotion. It’s interesting, noticing it in another person’s writing. I know I’ve been called out on doing that. I do it a lot actually, but I couldn’t quite grasp the idea of why it was distracting to readers. This one had some interruption patterns in it that were not frequent enough to make the head jumping comfortable, but it is not so frequent to make it a prominent issue in reading.

The randomness of the sudden physical fondness between the MC and a handoff spy caught me off guard. Honestly, her getting harassed the number of times she did, it made that encounter all the more stark and on edge for me as a reader. The build up was almost like a rebound relationship. No depth other than an element by which to show the character’s age-bound inability to make wise decisions. I mean, I was 18 and extremely stupid about relationships. (There are major reasons why one of my highest soap boxes I climb on religiously is healthy romantic relationship representation within books). It’s entirely plausible for the age range of the character, it just seemed…I don’t know how to put it. So often, characters end up being written in as physically decent to look at and that seems to make a romantic interest forgiving when there is no structure by which to base the romance off.

Am I being picky? I don’t think so. A general observation that just because you’re of the age of consent doesn’t really mean you’re mentally ready to make good decisions. Actually. In all honesty, I appreciate the showing of problematic relationship when it is called out for what it is. The other interactions the MC has had with individuals has set up tension within the reader to have red flags going up in their head going “oh, honey, no.”

This is a mid-fantasy that follows a standard story line, but deviates from the standard young adult pandering by reaching into the dark recesses of what people go through, women for the most part in this, in being objectified by not only the passerby, but also by family, in-laws, neighbors, friends. What happens when a person no longer serves another’s person’s needs. The author’s need to address these issues comes through loud and clear. They are issues that are used often for shock value in most of these types of mid-fantasy books, but with little character development depth. This one steps up to the plate and swings, sending the ball flying.

It takes it and really develops the anxiety and ptsd in the character. It doesn’t heavy hand the issues that create the ptsd, keeping it out of dark-fantasy psych-horror bracket territory, but the story contains enough elements to really paint a rounded picture of what it is to exist as a woman in a world where women are seen as little more than pawns.

There are moments in there where friendships develop and true loving relationships are revealed. That makes the point all the more clear for what is going on with the MC and why it is heartbreaking.

This fits neatly into adult fiction category, if maybe New Adult? I’m still unfamiliar with that as an age rating genre. I wouldn’t think to put this in with a standard high school library, but would expect an older high school age group to get hold of it and read it regardless of that accessibility restraint. Marketability would be probably directed in the mid 20s, but I could see 16+ reading this regardless of an age rating easily.

If you’re partial to a court intrigue fantasy in a different world with magic elements, this would probably fit the bill. Reminds me of Lady Knight or some of the Dragonriders of Pern books. Maybe something like Kiera Knightley’s Princess of Thieves if you’re thinking movies.

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Lovestory Manga Wednesday: Yondaime Ooyamato Tatsuyuki

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This one’s good. This one’s very good.

I am going to suggest privacy for reading this one. There are a couple dark topics thrown into this as a heads up, but for the most part, it is just heavy on the…let’s calling heavy petting…scenes. Oh are they ever detailed.

Worth it. So worth it.

*ehem* clears throat. I’ll stopping feeling all warm around the cheeks here in a hot minute.

Art style. Yes. That’s a safe topic. Okay, so we’ve got distinct characteristics for body types and faces. Background is worked out, but not overworked or underwhelming. *Throws the papers.* Who the frack cares? That’s not why you wanted to open up this manga and read it! It has scenes. It has all the scenes. The scenes are good. Take my word for it, the scenes are really good.

*commence theatrical anime nosebleed*

Do the characters develop? For it being a short series based on a spin off, yes, in the time allotted. I appreciate that the MC and the LI can both admit to actions they take. That they can both be true to their feelings. That they can both admit to mistakes and traumas and issues that they have, and still be there for each other. Again, I said there were a couple dark topics in here that might be triggering to some people who have experienced trauma as a kid, so heads up about that. They flash back on those issues a couple times, but not for exaggerated amounts of time.

Hmmmm. Would I suggest it, even though I found the entire thing uhhhh…gratifying? Gratifying might be the right word. If I knew a person had some major childhood trauma issues, or issues with the concept of a person willingly using themselves to pay down a debt, then I’d say no. You’re not going to be able to be comfortable reading this.

If you can understand the nuance in some of these scenes as round about methods of manipulation for certain characters to achieve goals? I can step out of it. Allow myself to be uncomfortable with the situation as it presents itself, and be happy when the conclusion of the set up is for the “damsel in distress” rescues.

Honestly, I much prefer this one over Ten Count. I’m aweful tempted to buy a physical copy for my shelf…though that’d make some of my other house members uncomfortable, so I’ll just bookmark it instead.

There’s enough character development and a minor amount of subplot for a story, but it’s really just here to answer an itch, and does it ever do that well. Okay. I’ll stop. This is embarrassing. I have no regrets. Not sorry.

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Video Game Review Tuesday: Kingdom Hearts 2 (PS2)

Alright, so, if you read my post on Kingdom Hearts 1, you’re probably aware of my history with this game.

Instead of using the money mom and dad had saved up for my Junior year prom ticket, they let me buy Kingdom Hearts 2 brand new with it and I spent the entire weekend diving this game. Trust me, so much better than prom. I hate big crowds and that whole level of awkward.

This game was beautiful when it came out. Especially compared to the progression of the animatic stylization from Kingdom Hearts 1. There were more characters, more depth, and in general just a sense of continuation you wanted at the end of KH1.

The issue I had with the game though was that there were a series of KH games on outlayer consoles I was not aware of between KH 1 and KH2. There was a lot of storyline that gets missed between the two. I was thrown into a world with Roxas and the other characters and had almost no context as to who they were and why I should care about them.

Recently, KH and Square Enix has released for PS4 the 10 game set as one entirely playable single console game. I have plans of picking that one up and playing all of them in sequential order and doing reviews, that way, just maybe, the storyline will finally make some sense in my head.

Comparing KH1 and KH2, the story telling pattern was consistent. The directors didn’t mess with the rules or expectations, which probably was the reason for a continued fanbase.

Comparing KH2 to KH3, I much prefer KH2. KH3 has great graphics, but there were A LOT of additions to the platform in the realm of magic and summons that is, honestly, overwhelming. I still have no clue where some of the summons in KH3 came from, hence, why I say I need to pick up the full game series to play.

Back playing KH2, the graphics aren’t bad. They aren’t Breath of the Wild or Horizon Zero Dawn. They aren’t terrible though. It is an entirely playable game a little more than a decade later.

The bad part, in reviewing the game and writing up the article, I’m still way stuck in Stardew Valley land. I’ve found a game I am enjoying a ton, and it’s just a redundant little game compared to this epic. Maybe it has more to do with keeping up with a complex storyline? I am not giving myself as much time between games for reviews to really devote myself to the 50+ hours of time it takes to get through a full story game and do at least half of the side quests.

Would I suggest the game now? It’s a fun bit of retro and worth starting from the beginning. If you start off first with KH2 or KH3 without at least watching someone do a full play through of KH1, you are going to be lost on what is going.

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Manga Cafe Monday: Arifureta Shokugyou de Sekai Saikyou

This is another manga that I came to after watching the anime. Let’s just go with the anime is freaking awesome and seriously needs the publisher to push both more manga and anime a lot faster. Please and thank you.

Both the manga and anime delve into dark gore. The MC ends up eating monster meat after someone betrays him and he falls into the deep recess of a dungeon. Between trauma, eating monster meat, and having a weird problem with healing regeneration, he kind of ends up with a slightly bent out of shape personality and some major power upgrades.

Also, finds himself a pretty sweet vampire girlfried-wife-partner. I love this partnership. I really really do. This type needs to be more prevalent in romance manga for all types. Seriously. He protects her, she protects them. They are both over powered, and both pretty much on the same page. It’s like watching a really stable married couple who can beat your ass and serve you tea and you don’t know who punched you and where the cup came from and you’re slightly concerned because the tea tastes super expensive.

The art in the manga is intricate, brutal, delicate, intense. The artists spend hecka-days on this thing is my bet for why they don’t release too often. It shows and it is on point.

This is one of those destructive anime types where, at least for me, I can get into the emotions of the MC. The indifference, the annoyance, and the sadistic smile he plasters on his face when something’s about to burn like a nuke drop. This, it is not pastel. It should come with some warning labels, but it rubs in all the good ways a pastel anime does for me. Maybe its the representation of destruction. It’s fleshed out where it needs to be, or goes into shadow mode without massive blackout bars. It gives you the concept that the MC has snapped.

At the same time, he hasn’t turned mushy, googoo eyed over the LI. He protects her, respects her, depends on her, and doesn’t treat her like eye candy or a little kid. In turn, she does the same for him. It’s refreshing, and I am so freaking here for this balance! Thank you!

Now, is the rest of the story troped out? Uh…yeah? I mean, it’s an Isekai. Quite a few characters got pulled into another world. There are gods who are using them as pawns for a war. There are dungeons, labyrinths, heroes, magic, powers, etc. etc. I can go on. I think I read somewhere once that a trope is only a trope if it is executed poorly. So, I’m not about to call this a trope story, but a genre example.

*chef’s kiss*

This thing just scratches all those itches. Even the humor, deadpan, and sarcasm are delivered beautifully. I know it’s good when I feel like I’m smiling just as maniacally as the MC is before he goes destroying things.

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Book Review: The Shield Road | The Thief

Hello, we’re back with another The Shield Road review. This time, let’s talk about The Thief.

This one took a little bit to get straightened out in my head. I needed to reread the first couple paragraphs of Burse and Rafi to straighten out who was who. It’s rather fascinating when you realize you’re conditioned to read certain sounds in names to represent a masculine or feminine individual. For a bit I had Burse as the guy in the situation. So, heads up if you’re predisposed to y or ie endings in names that some people don’t obey the same notion.

The nature of the story comes off as a cross over between Assassin’s creed and I’m thinking the second episode of Castlevania this time around. With a dash of cursed object possession. The concept is rounded out enough. However, some of the sentence structure can be glanced over. Might have needed a bit of tightening.

It’s one of the longer stories in the book so far. There’s enough world building to give you a sense of place. It elicits a feeling of unease as the arc builds. Maybe not a character development situation per say, but it does give you that cold nervousness.

The cut scenes are a bit stark and reflecting back on nightmares in repetition could work well for a long form story.

Overall, probably another build up story. Hmmm. Curious now if all of the stories are based in the grey winter framing.

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Book Review: Memory and Desire – A Postcard from Neo Tokyo | C. Vandyke

A rather interesting little slice of cyberpunk noir private eye. I say interesting. Quite a bit of the world building rings true to standard cyberpunk – 5th Element, Blade Runner, Metropolis, Immortal, etc. That is where familiarity lays in regards to the setting and location.

Now, the interesting thing for me is the concept that the private eye main character is a woman. For the vast amount of noir private eye reading I’ve done, the last time I ran into a female private detective was when I read through most of Nancy Drew. Which, in a way, is disheartening to realize. There should be more representation of this in books. True, I read a lot of Western and Native American detective books where the main character is a female police detective. I enjoy reading those, but private eye as an adult profession and not written as YA with a teenage female protagonist is quite different from my usual. That needs to change.

Short at 47 pages on Kindle Cloud Reader, its a quick dive into a cyberpunk world with the nit and grit you want, and the speed when you need a hit, but can’t devote a full day of reading.

The mash up of Asian, Spanish, and English presentation is interesting to note. It doesn’t do the weird thing Firefly did by using the Asian influences as an aesthetic and then not involving an Asian cast. It actually has a balanced set of world characters to represent the influences so that it feels like a true melting pot and not a culturally appropriated costume piece.

I will say, the adult aspect applied to the genre tag is always fascinating to read from other people’s perspectives. How they go about describing their characters. How they describe the main character. Especially when it’s an observant first person MC. For who the character is in this one, the descriptions are probably on point for a crass PI, though it comes off a bit odd. Which makes me wonder at the mechanisms of description people form habits around using. Like, I’m not partial to straight up saying “naked body” or “panties”. It feels flat, clinical, or maybe unrefined? Yet, a lot of the descriptors I do use, eluding types (length, entrance, garments), are probably seen in a similar fashion from a different reader. Neither good nor bad, neither right nor wrong, just an observation that people have interesting quarks in the decisions they make in how characters perceive themselves, or how authors perceive their characters.

As I said, a good quick read if you’re taking the train in or stuck on a slightly long bus route or just need a bit of a cyberpunk hit without dedicating the next week to learning a massive world and political system.

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