Book review: "Flirt" by Laurell K. Hamilton

(Holy hell, I just realized I haven't written a review of this series in more than a year. I'm such a slacker. I read them, just didn't write it up. This book is too short to write a review without giving away plot points. You've been warned!)

When I first heard this novella was coming out, I was both excited and not expecting much. I love the Anita Blake series--I re-read them about once a year, if not more. So I was excited there would be another one to add to my collection. But I was also worried it was going to be like Micah, the other novella in the series. I think I read it in the store in less than an hour, bought it just to have the complete set, and have never opened it again. Micah isn't my favorite character, so a book that was largely about his past, and Anita's stupid emotional issues, and them having sex .... just not interesting to me. I was worried Flirt would be a book all about Jason (again, like Blood Noir) or worse, Nathaniel.

But hooray, it wasn't! It was actually a very nice blend of present and past-style Anita stories. It starts in her office, with two clients wanting her to raise the dead: one out of grief, one for nefarious purposes. She turns them down, before going out for a kind of hilarious lunch date with Jason, Nathaniel, and Micah; there's some of the emotional shit-shoveling that's present in all the books, but it's not belabored, which is nice.

Two weeks later, Anita is abducted by two strange werelions on behalf of one of the crazy clients from before. Of course, with her menagerie of metaphysical wereanimals, all sorts of furry issues erupt. The ardeur plays a part, as does her ability to "roll" wereanimals. In the end, though, Anita beats the bad guys largely with her own powers, in a gruesome and terrible way. Really, the way the primary villain dies is pretty devastating. I like that, and also the fact that the reason for the entire plot is rooted in Anita's world, in her animating, rather than furry or vampire politics. It was a nice return to older-style Anita.

There were a couple of things that bugged me; one was that, as with the last Merry Gentry book, there were spots where some copy editor clearly was asleep at the wheel. Also, this is the third book in a row where Jean-Claude is totally off-stage. He's mentioned, but he's not seen or even spoken to. I'm sick of Jason and Nathaniel; we're overdue for some JC. Also, Richard isn't mentioned at all, not in passing, not even hinted at. I know it's a small book, and things had to be left out; but I really hope that Bullet, the next full-length book, brings back both JC and Richard.

Overall, I enjoyed Flirt a lot more than I expected to. It brought a smile to my face, and unlike Micah, it's one I'll re-read as I go through the series in the future.

Book review: "Divine Misdemeanors" by Laurell K. Hamilton

(Big spoilers if you haven't read through the last book; minimal ones for this installment itself.)

I've been waiting on pins and needles for this book for a little more than a year now, even since finishing Swallowing Darkness, which was just incredible. I couldn't wait to find out what happened after Merry and her entourage left the Unseelie court, to find out what they would do in Los Angeles, if Andais would leave them alone .... a lot of questions were answered, but a lot of new ones were raised too, so I was just incredibly excited to read Divine Misdemeanors.

It starts with Merry at a crime scene, where a number of demi-fey have been killed and staged to look like a children's book. The police are working it, but since Merry is working for her old detective agency again she's there to look at the scene as well. (It's a set-up very similar to the Anita Blake books, really.) Overall, I liked the book, although there were some issues I had.

The good:

• A lot more of it is her dealing with all the men in her life, and being pregnant, and day-to-day life. Which is interesting, and there are some very sweet, touching scenes.
• One thing I've always loved in both the MG and AB books is the inclusion of very authentic, grounding details that really make it seem like this is happening in our world--there's a lot of that in Divine Misdemeanors, which I really enjoyed.
• The overall tone of the book really was very happy--despite drama, and problems, and tension, you get a sense of Merry being settled, and happier.
• The crew from the Gray Detective Agency is back--Uther and Jeremy, at least, and Roane is even mentioned in passing. The Hart brothers are included as well, and Maeve Reed is at least mentioned.
• We see some of the lasting impact of Andais' insanity; we also see some people recovering from it.
• The soldiers Merry healed in the last book haven't just dropped off the face of the earth, which is a nice continuity.
  
• A new type of fey, a Fear Dearg, comes on to the scene, which is really interesting.
  
• Great sex scenes--there's a moonlit beach scene with Rhys that's really just incredible. There's also one with Sholto that if you really stop and take the time to fully envision it, is, uh, quite striking.
  

The bad, or at least not great:

• Although the murder case comes up several times through the book, it feels very much like a side storyline--but there's not a primary storyline, so the book feels rather unfocused.
• There's also next to nothing about either of the courts--Taranis is being accused in public of Merry's rape, Merry killed Prince Cel and tons of other sidhe, her grandmother was killed, she and Sholto were crowned ruler of the sluagh, she and Doyle were crowned and gave up their rule for Frost, and all of that is hardly mentioned. LKH has said that this is the beginning of a new story arc for Merry, and that it's a transitional book--but there's so little of the old, and only a half-step toward the new, that the book feels a little directionless.
• There's a weird "fairy godmother" character that's just sort of thrown in, and you think her presence is going to be really important .... and then she's just sort of dropped.
• I'm already sick of Merry commenting on her stomach still being flat, but she's pregnant. We get it. Really. You don't have to state that exact thing every time you touch your stomach.
• I love the sex; I really do. But there was a bit much of it. In a 333 page book, there are five sex scenes, with six of the men, three of them new.
  
• The narrating voice of Merry seems to be getting lost. Until this book, I could've read an excerpt without names or locations, and told you if it was a Merry Gentry or an Anita Blake book. But this one, there were many, many places where I was tripped up the fact that it seemed like Anita was suddenly in a faerie princess' story. There was even one scene that seemed directly lifted from an Anita book--Danse Macabre, I think--where Anita says she's Prince Charming, she doesn't need rescuing. I suppose some cross-over is to be expected when you have one author writing two supernatural kind of series--but there's been such a distinct difference before that I was surprised to see it.
• Copy edits appear to have been very, very sloppy. There are sentences that don't make sense because they're missing words, or their structure makes them say something different than they're supposed to. There are repetitious situations--for example, the cop named Lucy is told at the beginning of the book that certain demi-fey can become human sized, but half-way through the book she apparently doesn't know this. And then there's a spot that's just ridiculous: Rhys's matter-of-fact voice was my first hint that... "The barrel of a gun isn't a very friendly way to start a visit."

Although there were a number of things that bothered me, I didn't dislike the book. It just felt like fluff, especially after the incredibly action-packed Swallowing Darkness. So little of note happened that I feel like this book could be skipped without the reader being confused. I can recommend it because it was a pleasant read, but it's really nothing earth-shattering.

Short book review: "Haunted" by Kelley Armstrong

The premise of this book is interesting, as the main character is Savannah's dead mother, Eve. At the end of the last book, she made a deal to owe the Fates a favor in exchange for helping Paige, and in this book they call in the favor. Eve is sent into a hell dimension to track a chaos-causing spirit called a Nix, which possesses human beings and helps them commit horrible crimes. In a neat bit of historical inclusion, one of the Nix's victims was Lizzie Borden.

To trace the spirit, Eve moves through a bunch of different levels of the afterlife, sometimes alone and sometimes with the help of Kristoff Nash, Savannah's also-dead sorcerer father. While tracking the Nix, Eve also works through her obsession with watching her daughter and also her strange relationship with Kristoff--so in addition to the adventure/horror/supernatural aspect of the story, there's also a dose of romance.

I liked the book, though not as much as the one right before or after it in the series.

Book review: "Stolen" by Kelley Armstrong (Women of the Otherworld 2)

Warning: contains spoilers for the previous book in the series.

Stolen is the second book in the "Women of the Otherworld" series, and just like the first, it took me a while to read. Our main character is still Elena, the only female werewolf, who at the end of the first book stopped fighting her nature and returned to her pack--and to her husband whom she said she'd never forgive for making her a werewolf. The last book was all about a pack problem, but this one introduces other characters. Elena is investigating someone selling information that would prove the existence of werewolves, which of course is something the pack isn't down with.

It ends up being a trap of sorts, however; instead of information-selling sleezebags, Elena meets two witches, Ruth and Paige, who want to invite the wolves to join a supernatural council. They tell her that supernaturals of all sorts (witches, half-demons, shamans, etc.) are being kidnapped. Various snafus and problems arise with actual council meeting itself, and then, to absolutely nobody's surprise, Elena is abducted.

The rest of the book is about Elena's experience there and unraveling the mystery of who's in charge, what they're doing, and why. It's interesting, but it still took me a while to plow through it, and like the first book, I'm not entirely sure why. Elena was less annoying in this book, since she wasn't whining about how much she hated being a werewolf, so that was a plus.

This was a book that I would put down for days at a time, but then sometimes I'd hit a part of it where I couldn't put it down. I still recommend the series, although I've ambivalent about this book in particular.

TV review: Joss Whedon's "Dollhouse"

This is the third show this year I've started watching just because of a particular actor (the other two being Leverage and Trust Me); this is also the second show since Buffy I've started watching because of Eliza Dushku. Unfortunately, I have a bad feeling that Dollhouse might go the same way as Tru Calling thanks to the ass clowns at Fox.

(I mean, seriously--they keep bullcrap like The Sarah Connor Chronicles and axe interesting shows like New Amsterdam? Futurama? Firefly? Arrested Development? Titus? I guess I should just be grateful they haven't axed my most beloved House. Or Bones. I would cry.)

Anyway.

Dollhouse opens with Eliza Dushku's unnamed character agitatedly talking with a calm, sort of generically sophisticated woman. We don't hear names, or really find out what's happened; but the gist of it is that Eliza's done something bad, something for which there are consequences, and the other woman is blackmailing her--or in her words, offering her a "clean slate".

Suddenly, cut to a two-person motorcycle race through city streets. Huh? Oh, there's her ass in leather--that explains the need for this sequence. It ends in a restaurant--literally, motorcycles in the building--and Eliza starts playfully flirting/accusing her racing partner of cheating. They go to dance, and we get another cheap cash-in on Eliza's looks: several minutes of her dancing in a white dress so short you get glimpses of buttcheek.

Eliza suddenly gets a vacant look on her face and wanders out on to the street to a van, where a man asks if she's ready for her "treatment". She hops in and off they go. The guy she left behind watches and makes a cryptic comment to his friend about Cinderella leaving before her coach turns in to a pumpkin--whatever's going on, he apparently knows about it.

We now learn that her name is "Echo", as she prattles on about her date and her weekend with the aforementioned guy. Everybody around her plays along, until she sits down in typical-looking mind control device, where blue lights flash around her head and she seems to be in pain. We see a quick rewind of the dancing, the racing, and things before all the way back to a mother figure above a crib. Echo opens her eyes and innocently asks if she fell asleep before sort of vaguely wandering off--a good bit of acting on Eliza Dushku's part.

The man who delivered her for "treatment" and the one who administered it talk briefly, and we learn that Echo's "imprint" has been erased, and that she doesn't remember anything ... and that all this is illegal.

And that's all before the opening credits roll.

I really want to like this show, because I think Joss Whedon is great and I love Eliza Dushku. And I do think it's interesting, although the premier was really heavy-handed--in addition to laying down the basics of "evil group wiping the minds of beautiful young women (and men, it's implied) to make money and MIND CONTROL OMG", they introduce an FBI agent searching for the "Dollhouse", and they allude to a rogue "active" like Echo. Oh, and they hint that Echo is remembering things despite her imprints being wiped, and they send her on a kidnap negotiation mission that's complicated enough on its own. I think if they left out of FBI agent and the rogue active, it wouldn't have been so overwhelming.

Like all Joss Whedon's shows, Dollhouse has a particular look and atmosphere. It's certainly got its share of creepy moments, and obviously is going to be a great platform for a couple of things: Eliza Dushku looking hot and kicking ass in various guises, and the sort of social/human nature commentary Buffy and Angel and everything else Whedon is known for. It'll be interesting to see if a good balance can be struck between those two things.

Although Fox's marketing of the show makes me think it's going to learn toward the sexual, cheap thrills side. I really could've done without the "OMG, look how sexy and amazing we are" interludes with Dushku and Summer Glau. I know sex sells, but I hope this show is given a chance to expand beyond that. I'll keep watching and see how it goes. I'll also keep watching for more familiar faces--it was nice to see Amy Acker again!

Book review: "A Is For Alibi" by Sue Grafton

I first read this book a long time ago, like 15 years ago, when my grandmother starting reading them. I read a few of the series, I think through D is for Deadbeat, but eventually lost interest. Grafton's up to S or T now, so I thought I'd give them another try seeing as I'd forgotten the plot. Or thought I had, anyway! Turns out I remembered a lot more than I realized, possibly because it was the first book I read with a sex scene in it. Hey, I was 11!

A Is For Alibi is a short book, but I still had trouble getting through it. Kinsey Millhone, private investigator, narrates in a strange mix of dry facts and occasional fluid imagery. The plot is pretty straight-forward: a woman recently released from prison hires Kinsey to find out who actually murdered her husband. During the investigation, Kinsey discovers a woman was murdered the same way a few days after the dead husband, and tries to figure out the link. Simultaneously she's doing some boring observation of a woman potentially trying to scam the insurance company Kinsey free-lances for.

I can't put my finger on what made this book such a difficult read for me. Perhaps because it's a first novel in the series, it seems sort of choppy in places. I think there's also a lack of emotional connection to the character--Kinsey's narrative is detatched, uninterested, although nicely detailed. I think I'll try the next book in the series and see if it's better.

Book review: Bitten by Kelley Armstrong (Women of the Otherworld 1)

I had looked at this book series at the bookstore several times in the last few years, but was never really interested enough to buy and read Bitten. It didn't help that I had trouble determining what the first book in the series actually was, seeing as the covers don't say. But when people at work recommended it to me, I decided to give it a try.

Our main character is Elena Michaels, a werewolf in hiding in Toronto. She tries to live a normal life as a journalist, while living with her boyfriend--who of course doesn't know anything about her furry side. This is tricky for a lot of reasons, ranging from simple (she requires a lot more food than a normal person would) to more complicated (having to slip out at night to change form and run around the city as a wolf). In addition to being a supernatural creature in a normal world, she's also the only female werewolf. In the world. This is because the genetic mutation is passed down on the father's side, and only to sons; being bitten by a werewolf infects the person bitten, but the process is so violent and painful that the new wolf rarely survives.

I found the premise interesting enough; and the plot gets going relatively quickly with Elena's former pack leader calling her for help. Elena's character was a little grating sometimes. I know that the struggle to accept oneself is pretty standard for supernatural stories, but in this case it's sort of obnoxious because Elena has very clearly already embraced her werewolf nature. She enjoys her wolf form; she talks about killing with little remorse; she slips easily back into Pack life. Her desire for a normal human life seems at odds with how she actually feels.

The actual action of the book takes a while to get going, despite being set into motion early. The head of the Pack (always capitalized), Jeremy, has called Elena to help the Pack track down a non-Pack member, a Mutt, who is killing humans in the area where the Pack lives. Although this storyline does start very early in the book, it also takes a long time to unfold. I got frustrated at times and would put it down to read other things. I think this is partially a result of this being a first book in the series, which naturally requires a lot of exposition to explain how Elena became a wolf, her relationship with other Pack members, her life pre-wolfing, etc. It's normal to need this in a first book, of course, but it makes me wonder what the other books in the series will be like, seeing as the narrator changes, so the third book will require all that exposition again from the new narrator.

Overall, I enjoyed the book enough to continue reading the series, but it's not at the top of my list.

Book review: Hex and the Single Girl by Valerie Frankel

Hex and the Single Girl follows nine days in the life of Emma Hutch, a modern-day witch. Her "powers" are heightened senses (especially smell), and what she calls "telegraphopathy"--the ability to plant in image into someone else's mind. She earns her living by using this power running her own business, The Good Witch Inc. Lovesick women come to Emma, and she basically stalks their crushes, subtly touching them to implant the image of Emma's client.

As the book starts, Emma is on the verge of losing her apartment. Eventually we learn that an Enron-like scandal resulted in her losing all her savings, and she's been struggling since. We also learn that she hasn't had sex in a long, long time--because halfway through the foreplay the men go soft and bail on her, which has resulted in Emma having some self-esteem problems. She also is terrified of ending up dying of a brain aneurysm like her mother.

At the beginning of the book, a new client named Daphne offers Emma $5k to work on a highly eligible bachelor. Unfortunately, a chance encounter leads to Emma and the bachelor being smitten with each other. There are hints that either Emma has more witchy powers than she thought, or the bachelor does too, but we never really find out if either is true. There's also a whole storyline involving Emma's lost savings and a former client's bastard boyfriend. Another storyline involves the a model friend of Emma's best friend; the model was involved in an advertising campaign with Daphne. Emma's best friend falls for Daphne's assistant, and the model's lawyer falls for Daphne's other assistant--just an example of how everyone is connected to everyone in the book, with Emma at the center.

I was equal parts amused and annoyed with this book. Some of the situations seemed honest and were hilarious; some of the puns were just way too on the nose, and were groan-worthy. Sometimes Emma seemed like a strong character, but other times she was very morose. For example, she looks at a piece of toast described as "blackened, hard, dry, overheated, tasteless, useless, and unappetizing". She then thinks, "I am that toast." Blech. Emma is also both deeply romantic and Sex and the City-style blunt sometimes. She ends up being "saved" by love, being shown she's "worthy" by a man, and living happily ever after thanks to a too-perfect male protagonist--things which are standard in a romance book, but still a bit obnoxious.

Still, the book was enjoyable enough. I'll probably read more of Valerie Frankel's books.

Movie review: Enchanted

Twenty minutes in, and all I can say so far is that Amy Adams' squeaky little princess voice is making me want to break something. Well, and James Marsden is pretty hilarious as the overblown Prince Edward.

The movie starts out with a cartoon sequence, where Giselle is singing along with her little forest friends about "true love's kiss". Then she meets Prince Edward, they plan to get married the next day, and instead his evil stepmother shoves her down a well that pops her out a manhole in Times Square. Soon Edward, a sarcastic chipmunk, and the evil stepmother's henchman follow.

Giselle meets Robert, an uptight single father planning on proposing to his girlfriend. Instead he ends up having his girlfriend think he's cheating with Giselle, his divorcing clients think he's messing with them, and then going on a fairy-tale singalong trip through Central Park.

Most of the humor comes from the consequences of fairy tale actions in the big city--like when Giselle uses her magical princess singing powers to summon birds, rats, and cockroaches to clean Robert's apartment. Sometimes the juxtaposition of cheesy cartoonish antics against real life is a little cringe-inducing, and there are few surprises in the plot. But it's a good, fun family movie.

Book review: Locker Room Diaries

The Locker Room Diaries: The Naked Truth About Women, Body Image, and Re-Imagining The "Perfect" Body by Leslie Goldman

(This isn't the most cohesive review; the book itself is fragmented into very delineated chapters.)

Leslie Goldman spent a long time eavesdropping in her locker gym, interviewing women, and making pithy observations about women and their attitudes toward their bodies. Goldman is recovering from an eating disorder, which she mentions quite often in the book, and I think it's great that she's so open about it.

Throughout the book, at various points and in line with various subjects, Goldman calls for women to accept themselves as they are. She describes a multitude of bodies, in various conditions--fat, thin, tall, short, white, black, Hispanic, young, old, pregnant, post-pregnancy, etc. Through out she describes women traipsing around the locker room in various states of being, not to mention nudity. Unfortunately, her emphasis on appearances undermines the message. At one point, while discussing flaws, she actually encourages readers to look for flaws in others, stating that "schadenfreude can be your best friend" in the locker room. In short, if I were new to the gym, this book would make me more concerned about being scrutinized in the locker room.

In addition to the locker room, Goldman has a clear obsession with exercise in general. She clearly looks down on people who don't exercise. I believe at one point she expresses admiration for an anorexic at her gym who exercises three hours a day, seven days a week. The overall impression is that if you don't exercise, or don't exercise enough, you're not as good as Goldman.

There are also places where she just flat-out goes on tangents--for example, about people talking in the steam room. She also complains about womens' beauty rituals in the locker room. Now I admit I'd probably laugh if I saw a women take a break from blowdrying her hair to blowdry her nether regions--but Goldman apparently thinks that's just disgusting. She also criticizes women who blowdry or do their makeup while topless--while also stating that she does the same. She at one point says she'll stop walking around topless because some of the women she talked to were made uncomfortable by it; but she also talks about encouraging other women to go topless.

Gym-specific locales aside, the author's language also clearly belies her spoken message. I've already returned the book, but the example that jumped out at me the most is that assertion that someone's 36C breasts were "respectable". It really bothered me all the way through, and I think if I were less secure in myself this book would have made me even more critical of my "flaws".

The most depressing part to me was probably at the very end, when Goldman interviewed older women. Although some of them did express a certain comfort with their bodies, their comments seemed overwhelmingly negative. The same could be said about Goldman's interviews with women who had had children--such as the women who said she didn't want another baby because of how it made her body look, and another one who described her post-pregnancy breasts as "a nipple on a board". There were a couple of women who said they looked at their bodies in different ways now--able to create and sustain life, etc.--but most of them seemed devastated by how giving birth had changed their bodies.

There were some good things about the book. I admire the intent behind it, even though I don't think Goldman really believes in accepting people as they are. Goldman is also quite witty and amusing. I appreciated her efforts to include everyone--not only the various gym patrons, but the people who work at the gym, including the largely Hispanic cleaning crew and how their culture influenced their views regarding body image and nudity.

All in all, I think Goldman's intentions were great, but I think the concept would have been better served with a larger sample size (rather than just her $140/month gym's clients) and by less of an author bias. I believe Goldman was trying to give women confidence in their bodies by describing the flaws and conditions of many other women; unfortunately, she mostly manages to re-enforce the idea of women critiquing one another to feel superior.

(Goldman also re-tells a hilarious story from Kristy at She Just Walks Around With It, which Kristy calls "Why Yes, Cute Firemen, That IS My Ass")

SNL: Still not very funny.

I haven't watched Saturday Night Live regularly in years, because I found it more awkward and annoying than amusing. I like classic SNL skits -- DA BEARS -- and a few of the more recent ones, but generally I wonder how the show is even still on.

But I gave it another try tonight, because Hugh Laurie was hosting and I think he's totally adorable. Sadly, I was disappointed. The only times I cracked a smile were at Laurie's charming expressions. I giggled twice during one skit with him. Other than that, I was just not impressed.

There have been a few moments in the last 8-10 years that were hilarious; there was a particularly funny skit with Jessica Simpson that had me rolling on the floor laughing. When the get it right, they really get it right (It's my dick in a box!). Sometimes the political parodies are to die for. But generally speaking, I feel like Saturday Night Live is only still on because it's been on so long.