This site’s been discovered by hackers, so I’ll be making some changes in the near future. I’m getting tired of dealing with the spam, on top of managing to goof up website renewal (I think it’s fine?) and something going wrong with the latest newsletter. Don’t worry, it’ll still be here. It just might look different.

On the plus side, writing is coming along again. Writing is fun again, and it’s amazing what a vacation from the day job will do.

In the meantime, here are a few very brief reviews that contain spoilers, so please stop reading if you’re not into that.

First up, Amazon’s Wheel of Time series. I didn’t get into the series as books, because even in the early 90s, it was clear the series was essentially never-ending. Who had the money for seventeen-plus books that couldn’t be guaranteed borrowing via the tiny bookmobile? The friend who tried to introduce me to the first book certainly wasn’t nerdy enough to enjoy the entire series. In fact, I think she recommended it because she didn’t particularly like the series, and thought I would.

She wasn’t wrong, either, but it means I’m coming to the books late, and from a “what-does-that-mean-let-me-google-to-see-if-the-WOT-wiki-has-it” perspective. So: I like most of the episodes, while my husband found them slow, and questioned why some of the tropes seemed old-fashioned. Had to explain the worldbuilding aspects of high fantasy and the timeframe the books were written.

Then came the season finale, which was a surprising amount of talking for several climactic events. Husband liked it, I snorted aloud at the women raising their hands to the air dramatically. It was overall fine, and left me wanting more, and happy I had the books to find out what happens next, even as I’m aware the show is deviating from the books.

Speaking of The Eye of the World, whew. I haven’t read high fantasy in a long time, and it shows. I’m impatient with pages of description and limited action, even as I can appreciate the amazing worldbuilding and sheer effort that went into the first book of an epic series. Even though I wanted to know more, after twenty pages of not much happening, I’d toss the book aside and go bake for a while.

I finally hit my stride again in this genre last night, and was really appreciating how the actors brought the characters to life. Even the characters I don’t like or felt a little wooden are well done in the show, with only brief moments to show their personalities compared to the nine hundred pages of written text. The actors brought the characters to life, and I realize that opinion might be controversial.

And then, SEVEN HUNDRED PAGES into the damn book, I about lost my mind. Because after SEVEN HUNDRED PAGES of going to this city, and still not making it, the gang’s all back together again and decides to go to that city instead, not even stopping along the way for help. Even though the city they’re currently in has additional Aes Sedai that could potentially help, they don’t ask.

And then, Moiraine Sedai drops a piece of news in like it’s nothing. Oh, let me tell you about the MAGICAL SHORTCUT WE COULD HAVE TAKEN BUT INSTEAD WE WERE CHASED BY TROLLOCS THE WHOLE WAY. Because no one trusts the Aes Sedai, even though no one ever actually explains why, which makes for a lot of reader confusion over character decisions, let me tell you.

I’m quite sure I don’t fully understand the ramifications and the politics of it all at the moment, but it might take a few days for me to want to finish the last two hundred pages.

Moving on.

The Matrix, Resurrected.

In short, don’t bother. The trailers make it look pretty good, or at least promising. It’s an interesting idea, full of missed opportunities. What you get, instead, is:

  • Neo is the programmer of the award-winning Matrix game. Ah, that’s fun, I see where they’re going. Only…nope.
  • Potshots about a remake of the game that the programmer doesn’t want to do. Haha. Cute.
  • Weird young Morpheus who’s kinda – goofy? – and just plain not as good as the other Morpheus. What happened to the human, and why is he a sentient software program now?
  • No more landlines. That would have been a fun challenge. The new method of traveling is not well-explained or developed.
  • Sentient programs that can manifest and some side with the humans. It’s a cool idea, but largely unclear why programs or machines would side with the humans. There is zero tension about any potential traitor robots.
  • So many flashback scenes with old footage. So. Many.
  • A bunch of new characters with no development and no reason to care about any of them.
  • New Mr. Smith is just boring.
  • Some old characters I barely remember from the terrible second and third movies, acting whiny and mean because they’re afraid.
  • The zombie apocalypse, apparently. This is called “swarming,” and is terribly ineffective, especially for robots who practice to learn and get better at killing pesky humans, only the humans can kill them with a few hand strikes and kicks when the robots have guns.
  • Several “poof” moments when the swarming mob zooms away from our main characters. The restless audience has zero fear of anyone dying, including the new people we don’t care about at all.
  • Neo looks old.
  • Trinity is a soccer mom who builds motorcycles. This should make her “Tiffany” persona in the matrix more interesting but doesn’t. It’s not believable, and I’m not sure why.
  • Neo has infallible shield powers now?
  • Trinity has a girl-power movement, because the movie is really about her, not Neo, because now she is apparently The One, even as the movie tries really hard to beat you over the head that it’s really about both of them together. This results in a bizarre frozen flying scene.

I’ve rarely seen a theater audience so restless. No one waited for restroom breaks, and nothing was missed if you took one. An entire family came in twenty minutes late and left after half an hour. I didn’t blame them, and frankly envied them.