Early morning reviews
Jan. 19th, 2013 06:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearThe Lost Fleet by Jack Campbell
This is basically Battlestar Galactica, but really good nonetheless. It's a strong, well-written military sci-fi tale, detailing a fleet trying to find its way home from enemy space, with an untried but legendary (sounds weird but makes sense in the book!) commander at the helm. The protagonist has a lot of depth and there's interesting exploration of the difficulties of command and the need to motivate people to get them through touch situations. One minor drawback from my point of view is all the physics - there's an awful lot of discussion of light speed and how this would affect communications and visual information in space. I guess this makes things more realistic than a lot of space-set stories, but it all went a bit over my head and made the battle scenes rather slow and tech-speak heavy. Still, I certainly enjoyed the book enough to want to read the others in the series.
Matthew Bourne's Sleeping Beauty
Holy Edwardian gothic vampire fairies, Batman! Matthew Bourne is god where ballet is concerned, in my opinion, and Sleeping Beauty did not disappoint. I've seen four of his ballets now, and this was probably my second favourite (nothing is ever going to top Swan Lake). It was mesmerising, inventive, beautiful, clever and very funny in places. There were a couple of interesting twists on the traditional story (culminating inevitably in a homo-erotic battle between the good and bad fairies), though it did go a bit Twilight at the end.
Jackaroo by Cynthia Voigt
Overall, this was a bit meh. Teenage girl, trapped in a very male-dominated society, frustrated by injustice towards the ordinary folk by the corrupt, uncaring rulers - becomes a Zorro-type figure. So far, so unoriginal. It took some interesting turns, but most of the characters felt rather under-developed, while the heroine felt very much over-developed. The romance aspect was rather tacked on at the end, making it surprising rather than satisfying, and the ending overall seemed a bit of an anti-climax. It wasn't terrible, but it didn't have anything to make it stand out.
Falling Skies
My new tele-visual obsession! I just can't get enough of this show. The characters are good, the writing is good, it's exciting and intriguing and it's definitely got legs. In addition, Colin Cunningham is hilarious. I'm used to seeing him with a buzz cut and a military uniform (as Major Davis in Stargate) or in his underwear (at conventions), so the hairy arsehole biker thing he has going on as Pope here is just wonderful. He's by far my favourite character, and goes a long way to lifting the show from what could have been quite a dreary premise to something with depth and humour in all the right places.
Dante's Inferno
Lent to me by quintus-marcius, it's taken me a very long time to get round to reading this, but I'm glad I did, because it's really excellent. The translation I had was done by Dorothy L Sayers and manages to maintain the canto structure extremely well. It's incredibly evocative and very absorbing, particularly when backed up by a classical education.
This is basically Battlestar Galactica, but really good nonetheless. It's a strong, well-written military sci-fi tale, detailing a fleet trying to find its way home from enemy space, with an untried but legendary (sounds weird but makes sense in the book!) commander at the helm. The protagonist has a lot of depth and there's interesting exploration of the difficulties of command and the need to motivate people to get them through touch situations. One minor drawback from my point of view is all the physics - there's an awful lot of discussion of light speed and how this would affect communications and visual information in space. I guess this makes things more realistic than a lot of space-set stories, but it all went a bit over my head and made the battle scenes rather slow and tech-speak heavy. Still, I certainly enjoyed the book enough to want to read the others in the series.
Matthew Bourne's Sleeping Beauty
Holy Edwardian gothic vampire fairies, Batman! Matthew Bourne is god where ballet is concerned, in my opinion, and Sleeping Beauty did not disappoint. I've seen four of his ballets now, and this was probably my second favourite (nothing is ever going to top Swan Lake). It was mesmerising, inventive, beautiful, clever and very funny in places. There were a couple of interesting twists on the traditional story (culminating inevitably in a homo-erotic battle between the good and bad fairies), though it did go a bit Twilight at the end.
Jackaroo by Cynthia Voigt
Overall, this was a bit meh. Teenage girl, trapped in a very male-dominated society, frustrated by injustice towards the ordinary folk by the corrupt, uncaring rulers - becomes a Zorro-type figure. So far, so unoriginal. It took some interesting turns, but most of the characters felt rather under-developed, while the heroine felt very much over-developed. The romance aspect was rather tacked on at the end, making it surprising rather than satisfying, and the ending overall seemed a bit of an anti-climax. It wasn't terrible, but it didn't have anything to make it stand out.
Falling Skies
My new tele-visual obsession! I just can't get enough of this show. The characters are good, the writing is good, it's exciting and intriguing and it's definitely got legs. In addition, Colin Cunningham is hilarious. I'm used to seeing him with a buzz cut and a military uniform (as Major Davis in Stargate) or in his underwear (at conventions), so the hairy arsehole biker thing he has going on as Pope here is just wonderful. He's by far my favourite character, and goes a long way to lifting the show from what could have been quite a dreary premise to something with depth and humour in all the right places.
Dante's Inferno
Lent to me by quintus-marcius, it's taken me a very long time to get round to reading this, but I'm glad I did, because it's really excellent. The translation I had was done by Dorothy L Sayers and manages to maintain the canto structure extremely well. It's incredibly evocative and very absorbing, particularly when backed up by a classical education.
no subject
Date: 2013-01-21 09:38 pm (UTC)I had to google Falling Skies (though I kind of guessed it had to do with alien invasions, but that may have only been because the name reminded me of the sadly short-lived Dark Skies from the mid-90s). The first thing I noticed was that there's an actor in it with the rather fabulous name of Moon Bloodgood! Also Noah Wyle. I rather liked him in ER.
I've had a copy of the Inferno (and the other 2 as well) for about 20 years and I still haven't got round to reading them :/