Emotional rollercoaster
Feb. 20th, 2015 10:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearCloser to Home by Mercedes Lackey is the first in a new series called the Herald Spy, which follows on directly from the end of the Collegium Chronicles. I had thoroughly enjoyed this previous series, so I was very excited to see a new book coming out. The narrator is the same, which is great because he's excellent - sadly, though, the book itself did not live up to expectations. Several of the really great characters from the previous series weren't in it, and those that were were sidelined somewhat by the really annoying sort-of heroine, who was mostly a pathetic lettuce. The plot was basically a slightly skewed version of Romeo and Juliet, which wasn't remotely interesting. So, while I love the world, and the main characters this series is about, this particular plot left me completely cold.
The same cannot be said about the musical I went to see on Sunday night - it's called John & Jen and was produced and directed by one of my work colleagues, who runs a production company in her spare time! It was a two-hander, almost completely presented in song, and the two actors were really, really good. It made me cry buckets, which is quite unusual, and I was very impressed with the staging, the performances and the orchestra of three. It told the story of a brother and sister growing up and growing apart in the 60s, and how this then affected the sister's relationship with her son. Complex, emotive, and very well done.
Even better, though, was The Martian by Andy Weir, which I finished listening to this morning. Really, really excellent book - highly recommended to basically everyone. It has a lot of science and technical detail in it, which would usually put me right off, but it's done in an incredibly engrossing way, which made me actually really interested in it all, and it's certainly suspenseful! It was all helped by a fantastic narrator (one of the best I've come across), but I think it would still have gripped me in text format. It was immersive, exciting, intriguing, had great characters, a lot of tension - and it was really funny, which I didn't expect but which was probably my favourite aspect of the whole thing. Listen to it if you can - otherwise, read it anyway - I don't think you'll be disappointed. I'm now really looking forward to the film version as I bet it was translate well if they get a good writer and director. (By the way, many thanks to Hank Green for the recommendation, as I would never otherwise have experienced this!)
The same cannot be said about the musical I went to see on Sunday night - it's called John & Jen and was produced and directed by one of my work colleagues, who runs a production company in her spare time! It was a two-hander, almost completely presented in song, and the two actors were really, really good. It made me cry buckets, which is quite unusual, and I was very impressed with the staging, the performances and the orchestra of three. It told the story of a brother and sister growing up and growing apart in the 60s, and how this then affected the sister's relationship with her son. Complex, emotive, and very well done.
Even better, though, was The Martian by Andy Weir, which I finished listening to this morning. Really, really excellent book - highly recommended to basically everyone. It has a lot of science and technical detail in it, which would usually put me right off, but it's done in an incredibly engrossing way, which made me actually really interested in it all, and it's certainly suspenseful! It was all helped by a fantastic narrator (one of the best I've come across), but I think it would still have gripped me in text format. It was immersive, exciting, intriguing, had great characters, a lot of tension - and it was really funny, which I didn't expect but which was probably my favourite aspect of the whole thing. Listen to it if you can - otherwise, read it anyway - I don't think you'll be disappointed. I'm now really looking forward to the film version as I bet it was translate well if they get a good writer and director. (By the way, many thanks to Hank Green for the recommendation, as I would never otherwise have experienced this!)
