The Price

The Price by Anne Bishop, featured in Powers of Detection, edited by Dana Stabenow

I picked up this book at the bookstore for a lot of reasons. I pulled it off the shelf for the cover art, which I think is phenomenal. It's very intruiging, and I was looking for short stories as I currently have the attention span of a fruit fly.

What made me take it home was that it featured a story by Anne Bishop, who quickly became one of my favorite authors after I bought The Black Jewels Trilogy because, well, they had pretty covers. I had a gift certificate.

I didn't care if the story was based on the world of the Blood or maybe her other series, which I haven't read yet. But it turns out it was based on the BJT, and is a continuation from after the last book. I haven't read Dreams Made Flesh yet, so I don't know how it interacts with those stories.

Surreal is the main character of this story, which made me happy because I would say that she ties with Lucivar for my favorite character in the books. Daemon and Jaenelle are great, but Surreal has so many facets that never got explored. I hoped this would finally give us another one.

In a way, you did get to see a little more of her, but the story suffered greatly from being short. There is too much telling and not enough showing, and things wind up a little too neatly. Though I was happy to see Daemon and Jaenelle show up, they seemed like cameos made just to appease fans, and not vital to the story in the end.

I really wanted to see Surreal on her own, maybe with a new character, but not needing help from the other "mains" of the story. The end came too quickly and too neatly, with too much "inner thought" instead of action, despite a fabulous beginning. I also thought the ending didn't have near enough "bang."

For people who, like me, are in love with the world of the Blood, this is something you should read. But it absolutly isn't a place to start, and if you're only lukewarm to the BJT then don't read this as it won't offer you much.

Stellvia

Stellvia vol. 4

Tonight my sister and I watched the three episodes that make up volume 4 of Stellvia, an anime that's still in the process of being released by Geneon.

This show is quickly becoming one of my favorites the more I watch of it. Though there was a moment there when a new character was introduced, and was of course absolutly perfect and cute. But in the end she wasn't that big a deal and the show continued to focus on Shima Katase, the main character.

One of the best things about Stellvia istead of becoming a show entirely about space battles and mecha, it's actually about the people on board the Stellvia, a giant space station. You get your fair share of spaceships and such, but there's just as much personal interaction between the pilot trainees as there is actual training.

Of course this volume also starts to give you the payoff of the growing romantic attractions on the show, and it was better than I even thought it would have been.

There's mystery, spaceships, romance, angst, and humor. I really love this show, and I'd like to buy it one day to watch it over again. I highly reccomend it.

Various

Sure, this blog isn't actually visible yet, but I'm working on it. I just don't have a ton of time right now. I'm debating what this will be used for, and I think I'm going to go with randomly talking about what movies I'm watching and books I'm reading, along with the updates of the site. Maybe that'll work.

Tonight I'm working at the bookstore, which means I'll be taking back two books I checked out. The first was Juvenile Orion vol. 1. I liked it alright, but I was getting extremly confused. I know this sounds petty, but the binding on the book was annoying, because it was hard to hold it open and really see the art. I'm sure that means it won't fall apart, but I'd like to be able to read it too. I'll probably pick up the second volume, but it's not a priority.

Sin City vol. 1 was the other one, and I can't remember the title of this one. It's the middle story in the movie I think, with the woman named Goldie. I can't decide entirely what I think of it. The story was interesting, but the artwork actually was beyond not my style. Actually it really bugged me. But that was the story of the Sandman comics too, and I read all of those. Def. going to pick up the next volume of Sin City, because the writing really did have a lot of good stuff going on. Will likely rent the movie, but not spend the cash to go see it in the theatre because I'm flat broke.

Last thing I watched on my DVD player was the last of Season 2 of Friends. Man, I loved that show when it first came out. I'm going to try to make it past Ross and Rachel's "break" this time, which is when I stopped watching during the original airings. Ross got so annoying I just couldn't take it anymore. I wanted Rachel to dump him.

Before that it was Demon Under Glass, a good indie vampire flick about scientists who capture a vampire to study him. The big draw was of course that Jason Carter was the vampire. But the story was interesting too, and it really got me wanting to get back into filmmaking, because I could see a lot of the things they did while making it, and I really wanted to do my own movie again. I just wish I had the time.

Time to stop rambling since nobody can read this until I figure out how to insert it anyway!