Friday 26 September 2014

Summer Storm (The Wrath of the Northmen) Review



Turning off the games consoles and television and stepping out of their spheres of all-time-consuming hold this week, I have returned to reading. I was faced with Gravity’s Rainbow - all 780 pages of it. As I’ll likely not finish it before Christmas I settled on reading Summer Storm instead - which is a little bit shorter at 23,000. 

The novella is a freebie introduction to The Wrath of the Northmen series by Elizabeth Baxter. I would suggest picking up your copy if you are interested in reading the full fantasy series as Summer Storm appears to set a lot of things up for the main series. 

Summer Storm itself tells the short story of Falen, an adolescent princess who is torn between her duty to her kingdom and her own desire to join an engineering academy. A jaunt out into the woods to check on her weather measuring equipment sees Falen caught in a storm. On the way back she glimpses an unconscious man in the river and rescues him. 

Nashir, the man she rescues, makes a full recovery and offers to help Falen with her experiments. However, over time, his presence in the royal palace of Variss takes on a much darker agenda.
As a first outing into Elizabeth Baxter’s fantasy world, I felt the story lacked substance in how well it described the surroundings. I did not feel like I was actually there or got any great impression of it.

That said, the characters were interesting - especially Falen - and the narrative flowed well, if a little slowly at points. It’s not a bad intro to the series and something fantasy fans should enjoy.

Friday 12 September 2014

Who Turned the Lights Off? Revolution (Series One) Review



I am probably the last person in the world to review this show but hey-ho I’ve only recently just seen it as I don’t have all the fancy channels as everyone else. 

If you have not seen Revolution, you can probably hazard from the trailers that it is about people trying to survive a brutal and unforgiving future after the power goes off. Set fifteen years after the blackout, no one is still sure why it did. It is quickly established that it was not a case of someone simply switching the lights off or running out of fossil fuels but rather, something much more complex. If you build a battery in this world, for example, or a car, it will simply not work, regardless of having all the correct parts and a power source.

The series starts off about a young woman, Charlie, who gives chase to a local police force after they kill her dad and kidnap her brother, Danny. I use the word police loosely, the men in question are soldiers working for the Monroe Republic - a man who has power over that particular part of America. It is explained later in the series that the US has broken into several minor countries, all living in varying degrees of prosperity.
Going back to Charlie trying to find her brother, she enlists the help of her estranged uncle, Miles. Together they go off in search of him. However, half way through the series this original plot is replaced by an entirely different one about rebels fighting the Monroe Republic. 

While the change in gear keeps the story fresh it does feel quickly like you are watching an entirely different show, and with the death of a major character it leaves you wondering if the first fourteen episodes were just a complete waste of time. 

Its saving grace is this though: you never know what is going to happen next, which is what kept me interested. The characters (most of them) are complex and interesting, whose performances are spoiled by the likes of whiny Charlie. Also, I understand double-crossing is a plot device in a lot of shows but in Revolution everyone does it several times an episode. I lost count of how many times it happened. If I had a pound for every time something changed sides or their agenda I would be stinking rich by the end of this review. 

But I digress, plot wise there are a lot of subplot threads going on in Revolution, especially in the second half of the series, which keeps you guessing. However, that’s not to say the plot doesn’t have its problems. Some episodes, which have self contained stories feel like they were written by five-year-olds; a secret town of children who have eluded trained and armed soldiers for years being one of them (what?). 

That’s not to say I did not like the first series of Revolution, I thoroughly did. Yet as it went on I felt like the story began to get a little too confusing with so much going on and a little too fanciful for its own good. I’ve not seen the second season yet but I’m told it’s more of the same and awful. We’ll see…