Book Review: The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

Posted on August 2, 2014 by C.A. Jacobs

The first thing I have to say about The Lovely Bones (Horror 328 pages) by Alice Sebold is WOW. This book starts out with a gruesome and extremely unpleasant rape and murder of a young teenage girl and becomes one of the more emotional reads I’ve gone through in a very, very long time. Possibly the most emotional read I’ve ever experienced.

Even though this is a book for my Readings In the Genre The Haunted, I was absolutely blown away by the power of this book. And extremely lucky to be part of such an amazing program where this kind of reading is my homework.

There are so many pages I marked in this book that I’m not really sure I’m going to take the time to go through all of them here, but this is definitely the most I’ve marked anything I’ve ever read or seen. It looks like I marked twelve sections and I remember there were several sections that I didn’t mark just because I’d already marked so very many.

Probably the most moving section for me was on page 280, “I realized how much I wished I could be where my mother was. His love for my mother wasn’t about looking back and loving something that would never change. It was about loving my mother for everything – for her brokenness and her fleeing, for her being there right then in that moment before the sun rose and the hospital staff came in. It was about touching that hair with the side of his fingertip, and knowing yet plumbing fearlessly the depths of her ocean eyes.” This probably hit me the hardest because that’s what real love is – it’s not just loving the memories or the good times, but of accepting and loving a person for everything they are, including the times they hurt you or you hurt them. It’s about loving who they were, who they are, and who they will be. It’s knowing that you may never understand or act the same way they do, but that you will love them anyway. That’s what real love is. And even though I have now finished this book, while I type here, this section still has tremendous power over me.

Another passage relating to the loss of someone you love was on page 261, “But as we danced and spun – none of the herky-jerky awkwardness of Earth – what I remembered was how I’d found him crying to this music and asked him why. ‘Sometimes you cry, Suzie, even when someone you love has been gone a long time.’ He had held me against him then, just briefly, and then I had run outside to play again with Lindsey in what seemed like my grandfather’s huge backyard.” This also struck a chord with me, mostly just because of how true it is that no length of time lessens the amount you can miss someone you love. Months, years, decades, you can never know when you will miss someone you love. And in all that time, the ache never really goes away, you just learn to deal with it and bear the pain. That same undercurrent occupied most of the book – how Suzie’s family and friends still thought of her and missed her and how everything in their lives was connected, not just to her death, but to her life as well.

Another related passage that also hit me along the same lines and very hard was on page 310, “Instead, I saw how hope was what I had traded on in heaven and on Earth. Dreams of being a wildlife photographer, dreams of winning an Oscar in junior year, dreams of kissing Ray Singh once more. Look what happens when you dream.” I think this was maybe harder for me because I have been living on my dreams for a very long time now and it feels some days like my will to see and live my dreams is the only thing keeping my head above water some days. Sometimes, I argue with myself about how healthy or safe it might be or not be for me to put so much stock into unachievable day dreams. I wonder if I should let go and move somewhere else. I wonder how much of my heart I should continue to invest into things that feel so far away and so out of reach. But here, in this work of well-written fiction, comes the power of believing and hoping in your dreams.

This book is different than the other books I’ve read for this class so far because this was more a story of life, love, and hope, for all that the premise was something rather grim and unsettling. I mean, really, the book starts with the rape and murder of Suzie. These days, I tend to not read the backs of the books I’m reading before I actually read the books themselves because I’ve found that a lot of the summaries are giving away key information that I’d rather not know before I read the story itself. So I wasn’t exactly expecting the book to start the way it did. I’m glad I didn’t know, though, because it made the story a real and unexpected journey for me.

For all that it starts in a rather graphic and unpleasant place, the story is really interesting. What kept pulling me along was the hope that some little clue would lead to justice being served and George Harvey getting the punishment he deserved for being a monster. I think there were times in the book where I might have felt sorry for him, where the tiny bits of his past were revealed and it showed what kind of environment he came from, but that didn’t really make me feel any less hostile towards him. We are who we choose to be and he chose to be a monster.

In all my travels, I sometimes feel as though the worst monster I’ve encountered, and will likely continue to encounter, is the human monster. Those who are either compelled beyond their ability to control or those who receive joy and pleasure from inflicting pain upon their fellow humans and fellow living creatures. Those who torture animals or people, rape, and get satisfaction out of seeing others in pain. And, yes, George Harvey had some unpleasant situations to deal with as a child, but people coming out of bad situations don’t always turn out to be bad people. Sometimes, the exact opposite happens, where they become the most amazing people who care about the world around them because they made the conscious choice to make the world better than the one they knew.

Overall, this book is easily a four on my rating scale. I don’t know that I have very many books that have rated so high on the scale at this juncture, but this one definitely hit me in a very emotionally memorable way. I think I’ll have to wait a bit and read it again at some point in the future to see if my view of this book changes as my life progresses.

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Book Review: The Amityville Horror by Jay Anson

Posted on August 1, 2014 by C.A. Jacobs

The next book in the Readings In the Genre The Haunting was The Amityville Horror (Horror 315 page) by Jay Anson. This was a very different style of haunting than The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson.

I think one of the key difference with this story is that I could tell right off the bat that the house itself was evil. While reading The Haunting of Hill House, I kind of felt like the house was more lonely than anything and that it was just trying to convince people to stay so they and it wouldn’t be lonely anymore. The house in The Amityville Horror was a completely different type of haunting, where it wanted the violent deaths of the current living inhabitants.

I liked the preface by Reverend John Nicola and how he talked about the three different main stances, “that characterize the multitude of attitudes individuals assume toward reports of siege by mysterious powers.” He goes on to talk about the scientific, superstitious, and religious stances and how each of the three are classified and how people who fall into each category might see the world. Just like when I read Stephen King‘s Carrie, I can see how adding this information to a book that came out when it did adds to the reader’s knowledge of the story and how people at that time reacted to or understood unexplainable occurrences.

George and Kathy’s list of unexplainable occurrences as well as the danger in the house and the manifestations continued to build throughout the story, making me curious as to what happened next. I also liked that the story sort of made you feel okay about reading it, even though there were some rather freaky and unpleasant thing going on. If you read the back of the book, you know that the entire family survives to flee in terror after only spending 28 days in the house.

“The shocking true story of an American dream that turned into a nightmare beyond imagining. In December 1975, the Lutz family moved into their new home on suburban Long Island. George and Kathleen Lutz knew that, one year earlier, Ronald DeFeo had murdered his parents, brothers, and sisters in the house, but the property – complete with boathouse and swimming pool – and the price had been two good to pass up. Twenty-eight days later, the entire Lutz family fled in terror This is the spellbinding, bestselling true story that gripped the nation – the story of a house possessed by evil spirits, haunted by psychic phenomena almost too terrible to describe.”

It’s interesting for me to note the summary on the back for a couple of reasons. The first being that I was very amused by the line, “Twenty-eight days later,” because I remember watching the movie with that title. I wonder if those that made the very unrelated movie 28 Days Later had intended there to be a correlation. I strongly doubt it, but it amused me nonetheless.

The other part about the summary on the back of the book that interested me was how it talks about how the house was possessed by evil spirits and haunted by psychic phenomena. I mentioned a few paragraphs ago about the preface from Reverend John Nicola and how he spoke of the three main stances when viewing extraordinary phenomena. In some ways, it feels like there might have been more acceptance for the mystical back in the late sixties and early seventies. The churches had the three types of stances categorized and seemed like they had plans in place to deal with supernatural occurrences. Today, I don’t know of very many strongly religious people who would willingly acknowledge these types categories. I would think that things would be reversed, where people with their much broader intellectual base would be more willing to accept supernatural occurrences today rather than forty years ago. There are even popular television shows these days about ghost hunters and their search to prove to their viewers that places are either haunted or not, but I’m not really sure how seriously people take those shows, even though they clearly have scientific methods to measure psychic phenomena.

This book clearly outlines pretty much all of the signs and symptoms of psychic phenomena or supernatural occurrences or hauntings or whatever. There are spots of warmth and cold, ghostly images, presences of others, flies, green goo, moving furniture, weather problems, etc., and I guess all these could be used as something of a checklist if you ever feel like your house or living environment may not be entirely safe.

One of the other interesting things to me is how it appears as though there were a variety of spirits in the house and not just those with malevolent intent. The elderly couple, the pig guy, potentially the “neighbor” who brought a six-pack of beer as a house-warming gesture, the little boy, and the creepy white monster. It made me really start to think about whether or not all the ghosts interact with each other. This was somewhat partially eluded to when Missy mentions that there was the little boy ghost who she’ll soon get to play with, but I think it’s something interesting to note, because it kind of felt like all the different spirits wanted different things. I wonder if they had different times or places where each of them could be more influential and that’s why some rooms of the house were safer than others? Because I can’t imagine that the elderly couple or the little boy meant any real harm. Those that were part of the sacrifices and such, I can absolutely see as meaning harm.

Overall, I think I would rate this book as a high two on my rating scale. It was an interesting read, but it really wasn’t gripping and I didn’t really get the full sense of movement and urgency from it that I have from some previous books. I’m glad that I own it so that I can use it as a reference in the future, but I’m not sure how likely I am to reread the whole thing again.

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Movie Review: Nightwatch

Posted on July 29, 2014 by C.A. Jacobs

While searching for any of the movies for my Readings In the Genre The Haunting at my local library, I came across the movie Nightwatch. I’d read the book by Sergei Lukyanenko just over a year ago and didn’t know there was a movie. Naturally, that means that I was curious enough to borrow the movie from the library because I do remember enjoying the book.

The movie had a lot of details that I potentially missed when I was reading the book or it made connections that weren’t in the book in order to make the movie easier to follow. Or maybe this really was a subtle plot thing that I totally missed when I was reading the book. I’m not really sure, which motivates me to reread the book. Unfortunately, I absolutely don’t have time to do that.

The biggest and most prominent of the details that I caught in the movie and not in the book was that Yegor/Egor was Anton’s son that he had tried to have an abortion on twelve years prior. That one detail changed just about everything in the story. It changed Anton’s motivations and how long the Powers That Be had been manipulating him and the world in general. It changed how Anton came to realize he was an Other and how he interacted with that world.

I really didn’t understand the person caught in between the powers of light and dark. His role was never explained. In the book, you have Maxim who fills the role of the Inquisitor or Executioner. He acts as a judge between the two sides where there is a dispute beyond the normal limits. But the man in the middle in the movie was clearly there by accident and it was never made clear if the light people and the dark people even knew that he was there, let alone all that he had witnessed.

The movie seemed to be a lot darker than I found the book. I don’t know if that’s because am sometimes more of a visual person or if I focused more on what was going on in the book and not so much of the gritty details while I was reading it. There were some very interesting cringe moments for me, mostly because of my long-standing disagreement with spiders.

I wonder if I would have had a different view of the movie if I hadn’t actually read the book? I like the book much, much better than the movie, which isn’t to say that the movie wasn’t enjoyable, but more along the lines of the book telling a more comprehensive story. That’s generally true when dealing with a story that covers different medias.

Overall, I enjoyed the movie and am thinking about seeing if I can find the second one, as I only own the first book and the second book. I don’t think I had a chance to finish the second book last summer because I borrowed it from someone who wanted it back before I left on my last research trip. I think I will wait on reading the second book until after I watch the second movie so that I can maybe form a more solid opinion of the movie as it would stand by itself instead of spending so much of the movie wondering where the similarities between the book and the movie might be. I think I would rate the movie as a solid three on my rating scale, though I’m not certain if I would pay full price for the movie.

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Book Review: The Haunting Of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

Posted on July 22, 2014 by C.A. Jacobs

The Haunting of Hill House (Horror 174 pages) by Shirley Jackson is the first book I’ve read out of the required Readings In the Genre: The Haunted for one of my classes this semester. As I tend to do book reviews for everything I read, this kind of assignment tends to work out rather well for me.

To be fair, I haven’t really read that much horror. I have a very vivid imagination and a lot of the mass market stuff hasn’t appealed to me. So I visited two bookstores and one of the local libraries today to see if I could find the books on the list. I purchased three and found one more in the library about a mile from where I live. I spent a few hours of my afternoon reading The Haunting of Hill House on the porch while a light drizzle sprinkled the world around me. In this sense, I would say that my physical setting and the setting of the book were nicely matched.

I chose The Haunting of Hill House to read first because it looked to be the shortest of all the books I was able to find for class today. With my current stresses at work and in my life in general, I needed to be able to feel like I actually accomplished something tangible today. This may have looked like a short book, but it was a very in-depth read.

One of the first things that really stuck out with me is how descriptive this book was. There were a lot of times while I was reading where I could smell or feel or see the world described. The descriptions of the house itself and how it was purposefully designed to unbalance a person made me feel unsettled. I spend a good deal of my free time building and I can’t even imagine either the pure genius or the absolute insanity to actually build a stable building that was structurally designed on incorrect angles. The descriptions were very solid, but for whatever reason, I couldn’t actually get a good idea of the actual layout of the house in my head.

The kind of passages like the one on page 37 really spoke to me while I was reading, “It led them tantalizingly closer to the sound of water, doubling back and forth through the trees, giving them occasional glimpses down the hill to the driveway, leading them around out of sight of the house across a rocky meadow, and always downhill.” I think it might be because I grew up in a heavily wooded area that I can see this whole scene in my mind while I was reading it, and that might be the case for most of the book as to why I felt it gave me such a vivid internal picture of the setting for this book.

Even more of the descriptions and their affect on me were found during Eleanor’s adventures to actually get to Hill House. Every line while Eleanor drove her stolen car along her adventure to Hill House and the way she experienced the world really stuck out with me. I think it’s likely because of the descriptions of Eleanor’s adventure and her imagination along her drive that I actually found myself enjoying this book greatly. Her encounter with the old lady who said she would pray for her and the little girl with the glass of stars and her first meeting with Theodora were so well written that I felt I could almost experience exactly what Eleanor experienced and follow her train of thought.

I spent a lot of time relating to Eleanor and empathizing with what she was going through. I also empathized with Theodora and the way she viewed the world. It was an interesting mix to bounce back and forth between which of them I related to the most. I think I related to Eleanor more, though, because I really felt her genuine sense of belonging when she was happy in the house. For the first time in her life, she didn’t have to take care of anyone and she didn’t have to be the responsible one making decisions. She could go wherever she wanted and do whatever she wanted without fear of reprisals or of not being responsible. I guess that might be another reason why I related to her is because she spent so much of her life taking care of other people, specifically her mother, that she forgot what it meant to be alive and in a sense, she forgot that she ought to take care of herself.

Hill House provided Eleanor with a sense of belonging that she lacked for her entire life before arriving there. She felt like she was a part of something and that her presence was enough. Maybe it was my own desire to have people to share my life with that helped me to see through Eleanor’s eyes so clearly; how she could tell when the others were being dishonest or when she thought about how Theodora was just being a spoiled baby. To Eleanor, it didn’t really matter to her when the others were behaving badly because they were still there. So when Hill House started encouraging her to share her life with the house and to work to experience things through the house, it was subtly playing on her need to belong and to have a sense of community.

I was partly happy for Eleanor that she wouldn’t have to return to the life that she knew, but I felt that Eleanor was cheated because Hill House lied to her. She didn’t gain any greater community or sense of belonging by crashing her partially stolen car on her way back to the old life that she didn’t like. The house tricked her and trapped her, just like it did to so many others before her and now she’s part of it, but not really any less lonely.

The interaction with Mrs. Montague, Arthur, and Mr. Montague was rather amusing. Mrs. Montague and Arthur are annoying and pretentious right from the time when they arrive. I was kind of secretly hoping that the house would claim them first and that Hill House was going to wind up being malicious instead of just lonely, but the house was a reflection of Eleanor and her views of the world, which was evidenced clearly during the Planchette session on page 133. So even though I started this book with the expectation of it being horror and having a substantial body count, the only person who actually died was the character I was cheering for to hope that her life would get better and that she would find a way to feel loved and wanted. Meanwhile, the characters that I didn’t particularly like continued to carry on. Such is life, both in the world of fiction and in the real world. Things don’t work out the way you would hope and the good guys don’t win as often as we would like.

Overall, I was surprised about how much I enjoyed this book. I would probably rate it as a high three or a low four on my rating scale. I wish I owned this book and didn’t have to borrow it from the library. I also believe it was a good introduction read for me into the sub-genre of hauntings.

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Movie Review: Star Trek Borg Fan Collection Disk One

Posted on July 16, 2014 by C.A. Jacobs

While I was out finding Falling Skies: Season Three, I picked up Star Trek: Borg Fan Collection, which is 14 episodes from all across the Star Trek universe dealing with the Borg.

I remember watching Star Trek: the Next Generation when I was younger and I guess I didn’t really appreciate the vision of the show back then. I mean, I enjoyed watching it, but I never really saw how far ahead of its time this show was back then.

The collection starts with an episode from Star Trek: Enterprise, which was a show that I never watched. I guess that made it even more interesting to me because I didn’t know any of the characters or crew and I didn’t know where the story took place in relation to what I already knew or remembered of my days watching the various other Star Trek shows. I recall that Enterprise was supposed to take place as one of the first iterations of the Starship Enterprise.

I remember from watching the Next Generation that the crew of this show were the ones who originally encountered the Borg, which happens in the second episode on the disk. Q interferes with the ship’s mission and brings them into an encounter with the Borg, far away from the galaxies they currently have the capability of exploring.

So when I saw that the collection actually starts with an episode from Enterprise, I was a little surprised. The episode starts with a collection of Earth scientists digging up Borg technology and Borg drones in the arctic region. Being the normal scientist types that they are, they pull the individual bodies into their research area so that they can study the alien forms and learn from their technology. This turns out to be a bad idea (surprise!) and the Borg hijack a ship with which to leave Earth and start heading back from whence they came. I really liked the use of technology from this episode because it’s a combination of stuff that we actually have right now and how I can see the future moving forward. I also liked the opening sequence and how it shows the innovation of mankind. I’m not sure that I could watch the whole show, but it was really neat to see the vision and the ideas on what the future of space travel could look like. In a lot of ways, I’m a little sad that I don’t have the ability to explore space and I’m not likely to see that in my lifetime. Or at least that if it does happen in my lifetime that I wouldn’t be able to be a part of it.

I really liked how Enterprise referenced the knowledge that a fan of the Star Trek universe would know, like what happened in Star Trek: First Contact. The wreckage that the artic explorers found is from that movie and it shows another good combination of what the future might look like if we continue on our current technological trends.

The next episodes on this disk were all from the Next Generation and were episodes that I actually remembered. I really appreciate the science and the vision of the show. I mean, space exploration. How cool is that?

It’s so weird to me how much rewatching these Borg episodes that I remember from my younger days has interested me even more in the show and in space travel. I think this is a great thing, since my current project is a space adventure. Well, a space adventure that currently has a rather alarming death rate. I’m working on that.

The Next Generation is so much different than the current Star Trek movies with the new storyline and I like the Next Generation‘s way of doing business a lot better. Counselor Troy actually reminds Commander Ryker that he can’t go on the away team mission to the Borg ship because he’s currently in charge and it would be irresponsible for him to leave the bridge. Wow. That’s actually good leadership! So it turns out that they send the first officer and his team to do the recon kind of stuff and that the Captain stays on the ship to make the big decisions. So they have a person with proper rank and authority on the away team and a person with proper rank and authority with the ship. It’s a good plan.

I have a lot of respect for this show and it’s spiked my curiosity towards this show and maybe I’ll investigate more, just to get more space ideas. Overall, I’m glad that I purchased this collection and I look forward to watching more of it. I’d say this disk is easily a high three on my rating scale.

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Book Review: Justice League Beyond In Gods We Trust

Posted on July 13, 2014 by C.A. Jacobs

I read Justice League Beyond: In Gods We Trust (Graphic Novel 184 pages) yesterday while trying to relax and enjoy what will probably be one of my last quiet weekends for a while.

I think this is my favorite of the Batman Beyond graphic novels so far, which is interesting because I really don’t like the Justice League in any time.

I like how all the stories seemed to tie into the Batman Beyond world. The first comic in this graphic novel is the origin story for the character Micron, which referenced events that fans of the Batman Beyond series would easily recognize as from the beginning of the animated series with Wayne-Powers Enterprises. It also gives that tiny little tidbit that connects why Bruce Wayne stopped being Batman in the beginning of Batman Beyond‘s animated series. I thought it was because of his heart and failing physical health, but it’s mentioned in this graphic novel that it was because he pulled a gun on the bad guys and that’s something he swore he would never do because a gun is what killed his parents. I really liked how Micron says at the end the his mother has always been his role model and his hero and now he can follow in her footsteps. This is neat to me because his mother isn’t a superhero in the comic book sense – his mother is a paramedic working alongside the Gotham City Fire Department. I like that part of the storyline because those are real heroes. They don’t have any superpowers, but they help people and make a huge difference in the world.

The back story for this generation’s Flash was probably the story I enjoyed the most out of this whole graphic novel. It started right after the end scene from Batman Beyond: the Return of the Joker with Barbara and Bruce as Batgirl and Batman talking to Commissioner Gordon about Tim Drake and the death of the Joker. I was again amused by the grandmother appearance of Harlequinn and her two Jokerz granddaughters. She’s absolutely hilarious with lines like, “Don’t sass-talk your grandmother,” and “Forgive them. Karma’s a bitch and so was their mom. Would you like some tea? Don’t worry, it’s not poisoned.” I really like the red and black theme in the kitchen and for all the cookware. I think once I’m actually settled into my final cabin out in the middle of nowhere that I’ll do some sort of coordinated theme or decorating for my kitchen. Perhaps not Harley style, or maybe using this style and just different colors. But I digress. The Flash story then continues with Dani stopping a super-powered bank robbery and then showing up to work late with destroyed running shoes. Something about how her shoes were trashed gave me a good sense of reality for this particular story and I really appreciated where she was coming from. I also think it’s amusing that this generation’s Flash works as a tour guide for the Flash museum. So when Mindslide shows up and starts knocking down all of the Justice League members, Dani sits most of it out until she’s positive that she can make a difference. It was very refreshing to see a hero who took a step back to think about proper courses of action instead of just jumping in blind with the violence, as is most common in comic book stories. Dani keeps trying to be an athlete, but her body just doesn’t cooperate. She accepts that she has to find other dreams and other aspirations, but she still continues to try in her heart to be the runner that she always dreamed of, and then one day, she believes in herself and just acts instead of thinking. She discovers her power and she becomes the next Flash. She tells her parents about her powers and her father actually helps her to develop her suit. It was a really neat back story about dreams and family support for amazing things.

The two back stories for Green Lantern and Superman weren’t really as good, though it did show the origin of the blue assassin from the Batman Beyond animated series (the name escapes me at the current time and I don’t want to look it up). And the Superman story was kind of interesting, in the sense that it showed an older Superman having to deal with some of the consequences of actions he took when he was younger and saw the universe has having simple answers instead of complicated situations involving multiple people who believe they are the only ones that could be right and that the other side is evil.

Overall, this is probably a solid three on my rating scale. I’m glad I bought it and that I own it, as it’s a lot of good information towards the Batman Beyond world and also because of the Flash back story.

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Book Review: Batman Beyond Industrial Revolution

Posted on July 6, 2014 by C.A. Jacobs

Batman Beyond: Industrial Revolution (Graphic Novel 168 pages) was another of the graphic novels that I picked up a while ago after I finished reading Batman Beyond: Batgirl Beyond.

I can now safely say that I read the entire series completely backwards, but at least I know what order the stories are supposed to be in now. Obviously, the story starts with the three seasons of the animated Batman Beyond cartoon that aired a long time ago and then continues with the animated movie Batman Beyond: the Return of the Joker. After that, I think there’s supposed to be a Batman Beyond: Hush, which should be a trade paperback that happens after those events. Then, it’s Batman Beyond: Industrial Revolution, Batman Beyond: 10,000 Clowns, and Batman Beyond: Batgirl Beyond. But even if you do find those and you read them in the proper order, it appears as though there are still character holes in the storyline.

Having read the two stories that follow this one, I can see that there were a lot of tie-ins and a lot of foreshadowing going on throughout all three books. I thought it was pretty nicely tied together and that was one of the things I always enjoyed about the animated series. Batman Beyond always felt like one continuous storyline that remained consistent and true to its origins. Characters and events that happen in the story are referenced and lessons are learned based on the threat Batman has to face at any given time. I enjoyed seeing all the initial threads for the two follow-on stories tied in with this one.

I also like how this series ties in with the animated series. The piece about Inque at the end of the graphic novel was interesting and kind of motivated me to take action to help more people out. And it really made me look at how ungrateful so many of us are for so many common things, and also a bit about how we don’t really listen to each other very well, nor are we very good as a people of taking care of those who actually need it.

I don’t normally notice the artwork because I tend to focus mostly on the story and the characters, but I did find the Batman artwork a little awkward in this graphic novel. It seemed to me as though Batman’s face and mask were a little too … evil Joker-looking for me, what with big grins and a very pointed nose.

I’m glad that I read this and would probably rate it at about a three on my scale. And I’m even more thankful because now I actually think I know what order the books are supposed to be in.

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Book Review: Batman Beyond: 10,000 Clowns

Posted on July 6, 2014 by C.A. Jacobs

I bought Batman Beyond: 10,000 Clowns (Graphic Novel 188 pages) after I’d already read Batman Beyond: Batgirl Beyond, which kind of means that I’m reading them in a bit of a backwards order, I guess.

Knowing that I was going to read these in order at some point, I rewatched the entire Batman Beyond animated series, including the Return of the Joker (which was still just as depressing the second time around as it was the first time, just to be clear). I finished the animated series about a week ago and had a little bit of time today in between chores and decided to read Batman Beyond: 10,000 Clowns. But now I’m thinking that I must either be missing something or I’m still not reading them in the proper order. I know that Batgirl Beyond happens after 10,000 Clowns, but I really, really feel like I’m missing parts because of the interaction with Catwoman and Dick Grayson. To the best of my knowledge, Terry hasn’t met either of them yet, but here they show up and apparently know each other and have interacted before.

This is probably my biggest disgruntlement with the entire graphic novel industry. You can go to the bookstore and look at hundreds of graphic novels, usually only a few in the universes that appeal to you, and see several titles in each grouping, but none of them are ever properly labeled as to which ones come first. I had this same problem when I started reading through all the old Green Lantern titles with Kyle Rayner. DC specifically would make this entire series and then the story would stop right in the middle and reference a completely different comic book. So if you’re just reading that one series, you can miss about half to three quarters of the entire storyline just because you didn’t buy or read that one issue of the other title where the story continued. And DC seems to do this ALL THE TIME. It’s annoying. So I have no idea what order I’m supposed to be reading these graphic novels in and I’m positive that I’m missing chunks of the story and character development that are actually relevant. At the same time, this doesn’t mean nearly enough to me, I certainly don’t have the time to spare, and I don’t care nearly enough to do the potentially hours of online research it would take me to find what’s going on and read it.

I really liked some of the character development done for Mad Stan in the beginning. I can’t decide if I think it’s really sad that he’s so dependent on his overgrown rodent/dog, Boom Boom, or if I think it’s endearing that at least he has someone or something to love with all his heart. People with something important to lose will always fight for what they love which means that people with something to lose will always be susceptible to manipulation. That could be a good kind of manipulation where the “good guys” can find a way to get the “bad guys” to stop their dastardly plans or in a bad way where the “bad guys” lose what they love and then go absolutely crazy and kill everyone and everything.

I also liked Max’s subplot. I know it factors hugely into what happens in Batgirl Beyond, but I think she’s super cool because she’s unbelievably smart and she uses her brains to do amazing things with computers. I am often jealous of people who are remarkable with remarkable skills.

This graphic novel had a lot about what it means to be a superhero and I found myself deeply moved, especially near the end. “I think about my mom and brother, who’ve already lost my dad, and the hell it’d be for them if they lost me too … Not that I’m so great. Was I so busy getting my jolts playing superhero that I forgot I was also a real person outside the suit, with people I love and depend on, and who love and depend on me? Had I become that big a slag? Had I never stopped to consider what I wanted my life to be like ten, twenty, fifty years down the line? Did I want something close to a normal life, with a real job, a wife and kids? Not to mention my health? Or did I want to end up like Bruce, alone, bitter, in constant pain, and dying a piece at a time from a million punches, poison darts, explosions and crashes?”

Terry continues his internal discussion about what it means to be a hero right at the end, and mostly answers his own thoughts. “Maybe I don’t have Bruce’s all-consuming passion for wiping out crime. But he … and Dana … and Grayson, and so many other people, have taught me other things, since I first chose to put on this suit. They’ve taught me that, as long as there are people in need, and we have the capability to help them … then that’s what we do.”

And that pretty much sums up my thoughts on what it means to be a hero. It’s a topic that I discuss rather frequently, it seems.

Overall, I’ve enjoyed this continuation of the Batman Beyond storyline and I’m glad that I purchased this addition to the story. I would probably rate this graphic novel as a solid three on my rating scale.

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Movie Review: Transformers Age of Extinction

Posted on July 4, 2014 by C.A. Jacobs

I went and saw Transformers: Age of Extinction yesterday.

If I had to choose only one word to describe this movie, it would be inconsistent. A second option would be to call it entirely too long.

When I say this movie was inconsistent, I mean absolutely everything about this movie was inconsistent. EVERYTHING.

From the time of day of each scene’s shots to character actions and development to the technology to the PLOT. Nothing about this movie made any sense whatsoever.

That’s pretty much the best I can say about this movie. My advice? Use your money to watch something more satisfying. Which would be just about anything else.

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Book Review: Pock’s World by Dave Duncan

Posted on June 29, 2014 by C.A. Jacobs

I started Pock’s World (Science Fiction 250 pages) by Dave Duncan yesterday and finished it today.

“Pock’s World, long settled by humankind, is accused of being infected by humanoid aliens. It has been quarantined and may have to be sterilized. Five people are chosen to go there and examine the evidence: saintly but ruthless Father Andre; Ratty Turnsole, muckraking reporter ripe for romance; ambitious politician Athena Fimble; manipulative bureaucrat Millie Backet; and shady billionaire Linn Lazuline. They all have their own agendas. Pock’s World surprises them all. Nothing is what they expect. Quickly entangled in love, politics, religion, and deceit, they discover that the clock is already ticking.”

This is a book that’s been on my shelf for a number of years and I’m glad that I finally took the time to read it, if for no other reason than to reduce the number of books that I own that I haven’t read yet.

The book was intriguing with several times where I was taken off-guard by some of the random events and it was clear from the very beginning that there was a lot more going on than I was catching. There was a lot of politics involved in the story and I have a healthy respect for authors who can pull of the political intrigue within their storylines.

Even feeling that there was more going on than I could see, I didn’t really feel the need to invest more of myself in the story than necessary. I didn’t care about any of the characters and was only interested in some of the deaths because I didn’t see them coming, but not because I cared at all about any of the characters.

I think, for me, this is a book where sometimes the science got in the way of the story. I can’t tell you how many times DNA and reproduction and things of that nature came up. I mean, I get it, it’s a story about genetic manipulation, but that doesn’t mean that every single doctor or specialist needs to go into detail about what happens when certain chromosomes get removed or replaced or whatever. I’m not a scientist or a bio-engineer or anything even remotely close to that so these sections when they were repeated were more annoying than anything.

I don’t really have much else to say about this book. I was hoping for something more along the lines of space adventure and less politics. I think I would rate this book as a two. I’m unlikely to read it again but it was interesting.

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