I've been approached by several different authors recently (generally authors publishing their first books or self-publishing) to read and review their books. I guess I've left a helpful review or two on Amazon because I doubt many of my reviews here have been noticed by anyone. The most recent author seeking a review was Mike Sheridan, who is publishing his first dystopian post-apocalyptic novel, Winter's Edge. This is yet another eBook I've read on my tablet. And I didn't hate it. Maybe my anti-eBook curmudgeonliness is turning...
I understood the basic premise of Winter's Edge before I started reading it and was hoping for a gritty, engaging post-apocalyptic adventure, but the bleak world of the novel felt so similar to the recent crop of dystopian fictional worlds that are ubiquitous these days (Hunger Games, Divergent, Maze Runner) that I wondered if this was just an adult version of one of these stories. Admittedly, I've only seen the film adaptations of these teen novels and have not read the source material, though all the books are all in my home and have been read by the kids. Maybe I'm wrong and they are better than the film adaptations - it wouldn't be the first time.
I'm happy to report that I found this to be much better than the aforementioned teen-targeted dystopian novels (unless the books are a lot better than the movies).
The grim, dystopian future depicted in Winter's Edge quickly became much more real than the two dimensional worlds in any of the previously mentioned teen novels. Mike Sheridan's world felt a lot like the Steve Stirling's Emberverse - but with guns, internal combustion and cell phones/drones. Unlike the premise of Stirling's world (another series I really enjoy), a world-wide war and a second US civil war is behind the United States returning to a much more dangerous version of the Wild West. Warring tribes control much of the country (think Road Warrior) and the more civilized locations are ruled with an iron fist. Winter's Edge, the first novel in a new series, focuses on one small geographic area of the US (my impression is that it's the same geographic area Steve Stirling focuses on, interestingly), but it sounds like the rest of the US is similarly affected by the same chaos.
Frank Brogan, the protagonist of the story, is your typical super action hero. I imagine him as a more formidable Jason Bourne-type; a tough, handsome guy who is also an expert marksman with a heart of gold. But he's far from perfect. He's made plenty of mistakes in his past and is prone to making the same dumb mistakes that anyone else would make as he attempts to hand out retribution on those who have stolen purpose from his life.
Brogan's new friend was Dan Staunton. He had come to New Haven after the war, and had been a metal worker in the Eastern Industrial Zone, scraping by month to month, getting nowhere a little faster each year.
"You know what, Frank? I voted for Haskins first time she came into office," Staunton told Brogan, looking at him intently. "Believed all her promises about her inclusive society bullshit, hook, line and sinker. What a fool I was. There is no New American Dream, only the same fat cats taking all the cream, playing us for suckers again."
Staunton's face was becoming increasingly animated as he talked. "After four years, I finally got a promotion and applied to move into a S-2 neighborhood. Wife had been pestering me about it forever. Didn't take long to figure out all I'd done was swap one shitty little shoebox for another. Paid a lot of money to change zonecode, that's all."
"I hear you, brother," Brogan said. He had listened to similar stories many times before, and they never made him feel good. Moving up from S-1 to S-2 was about as far as most people got. There just weren't enough real jobs out there to get any further.
As I said, I didn't "love" this book when I started reading it, but that quickly changed. I couldn't put it down once I moved past the first couple of chapters. I binge-read the rest of the book in one day after I started it. My only complaint with Winter's Edge is the abrupt ending. But I guess all stories have to end somewhere. I very much look forward to dropping back into the story when the sequel is published.
I thought, based on the premise, the author was going to take a solidly libertarian, anti-big government approach to describing the failure of the US-experiment, but he is fair-and-even with exposing the weaknesses and strengths of a strong government as well as the almost-no government approach to running a city-state. There's definitely some pro-small farmer/anti-big agricorp farming stuff here, too. So if you work for Monsanto, part of this book might piss you off. But it all sounds reasonable to me. I guess that's just my inner-anarchist/hippy peeking out.
A warning: this is a novel intended for adults, so it does contain profanity (no shortage of F-bombs) and some sex (not super-graphic, but graphic enough). I would think twice before sharing it with teens.
Real-Life Dilbert
I mentioned a real-life Dilbert experience I recently had at work and last Sunday's Dilbert cartoon is scary-close to what actually happened to me at work, so I guess since I'm already here, I might as well spill...
Some backstory: my current employer allows me to work from home one day per week. So I tele-work on Fridays. A week ago, we had an all-hands meeting scheduled with the Director, so tele-working on Friday wasn't an option that week. I emailed my manager about tele-working on an alternate day and received an unexpected response...
From: Pointy-Haired Boss Sent: Monday, April 18, 2016 6:42 AM To: Pointy-Haired Boss Employees Subject: RE: All Hands Meeting
It's my understanding the day was selected to repurpose tele-working this week, since most of the staff tele-works on Friday it's the least disruptive time.
Repurpose Tele-working? What kind of management mumbo-jumbo is that? How is coming into the office (actually, an alternate location that's not as close as the office to my home) on the one day I don't have to drive my car repurposing tele-working? Replacing, maybe.
Ugh. If I ever get promoted to a management zombie (little chance of that happening), somebody should put a bullet in my zombie-infested brain.
I bought annual passes to Universal Studios for the whole family this year - purchased exclusively because I was stoked to check out the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, from this point on to be known as TWWOHP - which means my visits to Potterland are limited to non-blacked-out days. This week was the first chance, since the end of the Spring Break blackout, we had to return since TWWOHP opened to the public. There have been stories of massive crowds and three hour waits in line for the Hogwarts ride (and lengthy lines for everything else), so the wife and I had no idea what kind of nightmare crowds we were going to have to deal with. It's bad enough that it takes over an hour longer to get into Hollywood than it took to get to the land of Disney, but compounding that with potential three hour waits in line for one of only two rides (that's all there is in Potterland Hollywood) makes me think twice about making the trek.
I'm happy to report that there were only smallish crowds at Universal Studios (on a Wednesday at the end of April, just post-Spring break). It was busy, but not painfully busy. The traffic to get there and back was awful (as traffic in LA always is) and we only spent about three hours in Potterland, so we spent more time driving to and from Potterland than we actually spent within the park itself. The longest line we stood in was for lunch at The Three Broomsticks (one place we didn't have a chance to check out last time). But the atmosphere within and the food made were well worth the wait.
There was no line for The Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey ride - well, no people in line, but I should clarify that the journey from the exterior to the actual ride within Hogwarts castle is a healthy trek even when you're walking without interruption all the way to the end. There was an initial crush of people stowing their bags in lockers because the ride is pretty motion-ful, so you aren't allowed to bring stuff that can go flying into space. And I'd recommend you rethink your footwear if flip-flops are your foot-covering of choice. I was sure I would lose mine several times in the ride (and I doubt you'd ever see them again). I would describe this ride - from the experience of a seasoned Disneyland attendee - as equal parts Star Tours, Soaring over California and Haunted Mansion with a Harry Potter flavor. There are so many amazing things to see during your wait (or at least along your path to the end of the line - even if you're not waiting) for the Hogwarts castle ride that it's almost a disappointment to be hurried through to the end on less busy days. I tried taking photos as I rushed through, but none of them really turned out due to the lack of ambient light and continuous forward motion. You get to see holographic versions of Dumbledore, Harry, Ron, Hermione, talking portraits (even the fat lady who monitors the Gryffndor's common room), the Sorting hat, so many amazing movie prop replicas, and just an amazing version of so much of Hogwarts. It's great.
The outdoor Flight of the Hippogriff roller coaster ride was also line-free, but is over in a heartbeat and not nearly as fun as Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey, which is surprisingly long. The Hagrid-related props decorating the path to the end of the line for this ride give you some fun stuff to see, too. My camera/phone freaked out and stopped doing anything when I tried to record a video of the Hogwarts Choir, so I didn't get any photos of the fun stuff to see here.
One of my favorite things about Disneyland is the ambiance. Frontierland, Fantasyland, and New Orleans Square are my favorite spots to just soak in the magic. Even Downtown Disney has an otherworldly feel that just fun to experience. Potterland is every bit as great as any of these magical places within the Magical Kingdom. It's just so much smaller. The rest of Universal Studios is less impressive, though they've done some good work turning the "main street" area past the entrance into something - New York, I think. But it just doesn't have the same magic that makes me want to come come experience it again.
One other thing that wasn't happening during the preview day was performances by the Potterland Players (my own names for the musical acts that perform throughout the day). We were in line for lunch when the BeauxBaton dancers were performing, so I only saw them from a distance, but we did get to watch the Hogwart's Choir (5 members of the Choir, anyway) complete with toads perform. They sang Something Wicked this Way comes, The Hippogriff song, and a bunch of other very-Hogwarts/Harry Potter feeling songs (many without actual words) a cappella. The animatronic toads were making noises over the sound system to provide an underlying beat to the songs and one of the 5 choir members was a beatboxer also contributing to the songs. And the director only sang during the final performance.
My attempts to record a video failed, but Universal posts their own videos (from better positioning than I had anyway, so here are a couple of them (the singers in these videos are not only a different lineup from the performance I saw, they sometimes sing different parts when they are the same performers).
And like I said, we totally missed the BeauxBaton dancers, but Universal was nice enough to post some videos showing what we missed.
One last observations - there were a lot of costumed attendees. Mostly kids, but quite a few adults. The dirty Hermione was a popular option amongst the heavily tattooed and generally day-glo hair colored female fans. I didn't get any photos (there are a couple of them in line for the Three Broomsticks in one of the photos above, but not a good enough shot that you can really see their costumed splendor), but here's a video I found on Youtube that exemplifies what I'm talking about -
I was going to point out a real-life Dilbert experience I had at work this week and possibly blather on about a few other things, but this was probably more blathering than most people can handle. Steve probably didn't even make it to the end of this thing.
Man, I'm starting to sound like a creepy stalker with all my mentions of Xenia recently. Or at least what feels to me like an overabundance of mentions. Maybe it's not as bad as I think and I'm not a creepy stalker, just an average run-of-the-mill stalker...
I preordered the new 5-song Xenia EP and actually got it the night before it was released (EST time difference?).
My first impressions of the Artemis tracks: all the songs, other than Catch Me if You Can, are less upbeat than those on the Sing You Home EP - but if the Smiths have taught us anything, it's that music can be morose and still super-listenable. I also appreciate the lack of fake instruments in the songs - every tracks sounds like real music - real percussion, guitar, piano, bass, and of course Xenia's gorgeous voice (auto-tuning will never rear its ugly head in a Zenia track). None of the tracks are overproduced, which has been a problem with some of Xenia's previous songs.
I know Xenia has faced some struggles with her musical career aspirations, but if the content of these songs reflect her current current life status, she's also having some relationship issues. Or is just feeling lonely. Which makes me sad because she seems like such a sweet girl. But nobody said it's easy to find the right person. I think my wife is still hoping to find him.
It would be awesome if she toured for this release. I'd love to go see her live again.
As long as I'm wishing...I wish Xenia would find a way to release her music on CD, instead of just in MP3 format. More than the CD itself, I'd love to have the CD liner notes with the photos and other goodness that is - in the best cases, anyway - included therein.
And that's pretty much all I have to ramble on about today. I did pick up the new Star Wars blueray, but I haven't watched the deleted scenes yet to see if they're noteworthy. I was also thinking about mentioning The Magicians again (TV adaptation vs novel), but I've only re-read the first few pages of the novel, so I don't have a clear enough idea of what I want to say - other than the girl cast as Alice for the TV adaptation is gorgeous. Wow. And maybe I'll say something about Dirk Gently one of these days (maybe I'll even re-watch the BBC adaptation of that story first with the novels fresh in my mind), but not today.
Oh, and I'm heading back up to PotterLand in a couple of weeks. So I should have something worth mentioning then.
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