Movie Review - Mad Max: Fury Road

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This movie left me breathless. Literally breathless. I can’t remember ever being this sucked into a movie since reaching adulthood. I’ll grant you, I went in predisposed to like it due to the awesome, awesome, reviews. But I wasn’t prepared to be enthralled. I don’t know how long I stared entranced until the action slowed down a bit, all I know is a kept leaning forward, gripping the hand rests as though they were the only things keeping me grounded, my heart pounding in my chest, breathless. When the first chase scene ended the theater was filled with one whooshing out gasp. I think the entire theater was breathless alongside me.

Furiosa’s calm assumption of power right from the start was just shiver inducing. And then we really meet her, meet the wives, meet Max and Nux. Everyone is a person, no one is a thing. And all of these characterizations come about with incredibly stripped down dialogue. Few people had more than a handful of lines, and yet they were real. It was, in my opinion, masterful.

Some things were ridiculous. The wives are quite the McGuffin. And for a world so bare of water they seemed incredibly wasteful. And the whole mother’s milk thing strained credulity because of the sheer amount of calories needed to produce it. And looking back, the symbolism with the seeds is kind of eye rolling. None of that registered while I was in that seat. It was all action, and character growth, and emotions. And it hit me right in the feels. I am not ashamed to admit there were times I teared up.

So the question everyone seems to want to talk about, is this a feminist movie? That is going to depend very heavily on how a person defines feminism. I am falling on the side of yes, this is strongly feminist. We have a strong female warrior in Furiosa, one who made difficult choices in order to survive, and who risked everything for redemption. We have strong capable female nurturers. Splendid Angharad, Capable, Toast the Knowing, Cheedo the Fragile, and The Dag. Victims who decide to take a better path for themselves. No unnecessary killing, protect the children, work together, and defend when necessary and however they are capable. They are capable and have agency without being improbable warriors. Hell, even the Milk Mothers in the end have their agency. We have a man who neither oppresses nor cossets women. Max fights Furiosa just as he did the men, he assumes capability from all the women and acts accordingly. And Nux, a young man who learns, inescapably, how he is just as much a slave to this oppressive system as the women are, and remakes himself accordingly. Nux was a heartbreaking stand in for all the War Boys. And the thing that detractors of the feminist images point to most, Furiosa acceding to Max’s plan instead of her own, was to me a powerful feminist statement. Because feminism isn’t about subjugating either gender, it is about equality, and equality includes using your best allocation of resources and not relegating one person’s ideas or contributions to the backburner simply because of gender. A tribe of warrior women could have been made into a caricature with them relegating the supposed oppressing male to the inferior position. That didn’t happen, instead they listened, discussed, and decided. THAT is powerful, and I can’t see any way it is anti-feminist. He didn’t drag them by the hair, or decide for their own good, he didn’t tell them. He presented what he thought and knew, and THEY decided.

So that is a really long manifesto on feminism and a movie. And for all intents and purposes, it is useless. Because very little of that is WHY I loved this movie. It is just why I was able to start from a place of not disliking it or being frustrated enough to just want to quit. I loved this movie because I love high octane action movies. Guess what? I love the Die Hard franchise and the Fast and Furious franchise. And this absolutely works on that level, so long as you don’t mind badass women. I loved it because it was a wonderful blend of cinematically gorgeous and pseudo gritty that was a feast for my eyes. I loved it because of a music score that plucked my emotional and physiologic strings like a master harpist, leaving me at times breathless, heart wrenched, despairing, and euphoric. I don’t think I could say it was “good” music, but it absolutely worked. And I loved it for the dozen different individual stories that were SHOWN to me instead of told to me. I loved it for being a movie that just dropped me into the story and expected me to figure it out rather than guiding me through it, telling me all about it, and then monologueing me to death.

In short, this is the kind of movie that took me out of myself for the allotted time, made my heart pound and race, made me breathless, and made my cheap ass forget to eat my overpriced movie snacks. I am probably one of the cheapest people you will ever meet, and not only do I not regret the ticket price (as I so often do), I am perfectly willing to pay and see it in theater a second time. This is the must see movie of the 2015 summer, and I would hazard it is the must see of the entire year, if not the decade. Yes, if you like action, it was just that good.

Advance Review - The Unleashing by Shelly Laurenston

The Unleashing
by Shelly Laurenston

Available 03/31/2015

I received an ARC of this book from the Publisher, via Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

Foremost, this is not a rehash or a continuation of her previous novel Hunting Season. While I admittedly enjoyed that book, it was, to say the least, rough. The premise was something very intriguing though, so I was excited to see she started fresh with it.

From Edelweiss:

With the kind of outrageous humor that made Linsay Sands a bestseller and the larger than life characters that put Nalini Singh on the map, Shelly Laurenston—author of the New York Timesbestselling Pride series—introduces a new paranormal romance series featuring a band of tough-as-nails female fighters and the men who aren't afraid to stand up to them.

Winging It

Kera Watson never expected to face death behind a Los Angeles coffee shop. Not after surviving two tours lugging an M16 around the Middle East. If it wasn’t for her hot Viking customer showing up too late to help, nobody would even see her die.

In uncountable years of service to the Allfather Odin, Ludvig “Vig” Rundstrom has never seen anyone kick ass with quite as much style as Kera. He knows one way to save her life—but she might not like it. Signing up with the Crows will get Kera a new set of battle buddies: cackling, gossiping, squabbling, party-hearty women. With wings. So not the Marines.

But Vig can’t give up on someone as special as Kera. With a storm of oh-crap magic speeding straight for L.A., survival will depend on combining their strengths: Kera’s discipline, Vig’s loyalty…and the Crows’ sheer love of battle. Boy, are they in trouble.

Oh Shelly Laurenston, how do I adore thee? Over the top, kick-ass heroines? Endearingly sweet alpha heroes rather than alpha-holes? Plenty of action? Fun world building? Shelly Laurenston always provides a wild ride and endearing (and typically hysterical) characters.

Kera isn't exactly making her life all it can or should be since leaving the Marines, frankly she's floundering a bit. But she's got her job and her dog and her life. And then suddenly she doesn't exactly have her life any more, but she's unwilling to leave her dog. So Skuld, who has always been a bit of a rebel (she's got the only clan who isn't full of pure bred Vikings), brings her along, and drops them both in with the Crows. These ladies are crazy, a band of women who were killed and brought back as hammers for their particular god, but with a motto like "let rage be your guide" what else can you expect. And of course there is conflict with a by the book Marine getting dropped in with a band of no holds barred women living out their second chance at life, but that's half the fun. This book is action packed, largely angst free, and has a nice action and mystery to counterbalance the romance. Vig is just the kind of sweet alpha Viking hero I love to read about. And can I just say the dog, Brodie Hawaii; she's the best plot pet EVER. Yes there are probably some mythology issues, and we do just get dropped into this world with very little information (but then so did the heroine), and it is over the top. But I couldn't put it down, and I've already re-read it twice. I LOVED this book. It was fun and already has me hooked for the next in the series, and I can't wait to see what those other crazy ladies get up to.

5 stars

Review - Dead Heat

Dead Heat
by Patricia Briggs

(P.S. I am going to try adding covers again and see if I can keep them without breaking them now)

Patricia Briggs is one of my auto buy authors. I adore her Mercyverse, which includes the Alpha & Omega series. Some people suggest that you don't really need to read the Mercy Thompson series in order to understand or read the Alpha & Omega series, but I am going to have to politely disagree. Events that happen in each series influence and inform the events of the other series. This is the 4th story in the Alpha & omega series, and there are 8 stories in the Mercy Thompson series. In my opinion, you need all those stories, and you need to read them in order. But, at the least you will need to read the preceding Alpha & omega books before reading this one.

Up until this point, I would have said that the Mercy Thompson series was the Urban Fantasy branch, and the Alpha & Omega series was the Paranormal Romance branch. Dead Heat tends to move away from a stricter paranormal romance sensibility and more into an urban fantasy one, and despite my die hard romance reader soul, I was not only OK with that, I was thrilled. Charles and Anna are settled, their relationship is strong, yes there is and will be friction to their relationship because of how their pasts have shaped them, it would be impossible to be otherwise. But their relationship is strong. And that was the problem I had with Fair Game, it seemed to be trying so hard to be relationship focused and romance novel centric, that in places if made them caricatures of themselves. Not to say I didn't like Fair Game, because I did, but there were some uncomfortable moments for me, and not because of story elements, but because the character's actions didn't always seem to fit them. Dead Heat wasn't like that at all. This story was positively joyous despite the threads of violence and endangerment of children. We got to see more of how Charles and Anna are as part of a larger world, one that isn't all misery, but spans the scope of human (and werewolf) emotion and experience. Joy, love, anger, regret, fear, compassion. Yes, they focus on each other and continue and learn each other, as they should, but their relationship isn't the only focus of their lives and their actions. And that for me is what makes it possible for a series and a couple to continue to progress. We also saw the return of Special Agent Leslie Fisher, which I appreciated for one thing because I simply like her, and for another, because just as we are seeing Charles' relationships outside of Anna, I'd like to see Anna develop relationships outside of Charles.

Some threads that were picked up are: Anna's wish for children and Charles' fears, the effects of almost-immortality matched against the reality of loved ones who die, how werewolves are changed and the politics involved in that, the Fae war, and of course, good vs. evil because it wouldn't be Patricia Briggs if we didn't have that. This wasn't the sexiest or most sensual book, and we didn't get to see as much of Anna's wolf as I would have liked (yes we saw her in werewolf form, but not really her wolf), but it kept me frantically flipping pages and completely absorbed for the entire book. It doesn't resolve everything, which is good because that would cause the book and the series to feel static, but nothing pressing was left out.

5 stars

Goodreads Choice Awards 2014 Review - The Martian

The Martian
by Andy Weir

This is definitely not remotely a romance. The vast majority of the time this novel focuses on one solitary man. Now that I have that out of the way, on to the review. I picked this up because it was the only Goodreads Choice Award Winner that piqued my interest. It was outside of my normal bailiwick, but I do enjoy the occasional science fiction story, so I figured why not. And I am so incredibly glad I did. Some of the thrill was probably just the palate cleansing effect of reading :shudders: NOT ROMANCE. But, I think most of the effect was the fact that this is a legitimately good and interesting book. It is commonly described as "Apollo 13 meets Cast Away", which if that makes you want to read it I say go for it, but if it doesn't, well I think that is actually a horrible description. Mine? Mark Watney is Q from James Bond meets MacGyver... ON MARS! He is hilarious, with this irrepressible spirit, and he has this incredibly smart/sexy thing happening and he survives everything Mars has to throw at him with intelligence, science, and creativity. Honestly, I'd love to hang out with him in person, maybe stand him for a beer, and have his babies. Wait, that just slipped out, so maybe this is a romance...mine.

Just for fun, here are some of my favorite quotes:

"My asshole is doing as much to keep me alive as my brain."

"I'm the King of Mars."
"I don't want to come off as arrogant here, but I'm the best botanist on the planet."
"Yes, of course duct tape works in a near vacuum. Duct tape works anywhere. Duct tape is magic and should be worshipped."
"I'll call it a "pirate-ninja."
"As with most of life's problems, this one can be solved by a box of pure radiation."
"You're sending him to space under a tarp?"

"...apparently, I smell like a skunk took a shit on some sweat socks. This is the happiest day of my life."

Review - Archangel's Shadows

Archangel's Shadows
by Nalini Singh

This is book 7 in the Guild Hunter series. If you haven't already been hooked into this series, it's a delightful blend of paranormal romance and urban fantasy. The world is controlled by Angels and Archangels who are the progenitors of vampires. These are strictly secular angels with evolutionary rather than religious origins. And both the vampires and the angels are extremely other, not just humans with accouterments strapped to them, which I adore. What's the point of having paranormal characters if you can't tell them from mortal ones? Vampires are naturally quite dangerous creatures and so a human organization, the Guild Hunters, have set themselves up as a sort of police organization. They must work with the Angels and Archangels, as they are the powers, but the Guild is largely an independent organization. The series primarily revolves around the Archangel Raphael and Guild Hunter Elena Deveraux; however, it sidles off to explore the lives and relationships of the more integral secondary characters. In that way it is more like Eileen Wilks' World of Lupi than her Psi-Changeling series (which is another excellent series if you haven't yet been sucked in).

This is one of those series that makes me wish for a time machine so I could sit in a library and devour ALL THE BOOKS! I can't savor these on the first read; I gulp them down and save the savoring for the re-reads. And I can guarantee you that I will be re-reading any of her books. So, that being said, this book is absolutely not the place to start with this series. The mythology and the relationship backgrounds are entirely too intricate to start in the middle. Go ahead, start at the beginning, I'll wait right here :)



So, this is nominally Janvier and Ashwini's book. We already had a peak into their relationship dynamic through other books and most particularly in the novella Angel's Pawn. Ash has been notoriously reluctant to become involved with Janvier and this book gives us a bombshell about exactly why. I don't want to spoil it, but it was excellent. This is not one of those little nothing turned into BIG MISUNDERSTANDING situations that I find so exasperating. It was a serious issue, albeit one which as this is a romance we knew would be resolved.

There was a bit of a mystery and investigation involved, but it really served more as a backdrop to the politics and world building, and to giving a platform to all the main characters. It was a good plot line, but honestly, I cared much more about the characters than the suspense part this time. We got to get into plenty of our favorite characters heads, learned more about Legion, and....Naasir absolutely stole the show and has completely supplanted my wish for Ilium to be next. Ilium just isn't ready, but Naasir is, and I am oh so ready for Naasir. I can't believe I hadn't previously seen the possibilities of a tiger-like vampire. That isn't to say Janvier and Ash were sidelined, they were front and center and much of the story is devoted to them, but they are so closely tied to the families they have made that it is impossible to separate them out.

5 absolutely breathtaking stars, and if it weren't for the fact Ilona Andrews' Burn for Me is up in my que next, I'd be re-reading it tonight.

Review - Unbinding

Unbinding
by Eileen Wilks

Eileen Wilks' World of the Lupi series is sort of an alternate history, slightly post-apocalyptic, urban fantasy romance series. In this world, we have Lupi (sort of like hereditable werewolves who are only male and have a deeply religious bent), Sidhe, humans with Gifts, witches, dragons, demons and various other mythological creatures. Needless to say, with all of that going on, this is NOT the place to start this series. This is a richly textured world and mythology, but of late I had started to fear that it was making the mistake other series I've read has, that of building the world in inorganic ways merely to drive the series. I am so happy to see that that is categorically not the case here. I had a moment of tummy butterflies when I saw this story would feature Kai and Nathan rather than returning the Rule and Lily, despite the fact that I enjoy them as characters, because it felt like one more piece of evidence that the world and the series were devolving. Honestly, I shouldn't have doubted Wilks. Kai and Nathan's involvement with the god of chaos makes perfect sense, as does the god's actions in the previous book and this one. By the end of it there's not only a nice little resolution to some previous plots, but the diverging worlds Wilks seemed to be building have much more firmly been shown how they are really more of a tapestry than spin offs. It all felt really organic, and except for the fact that they reference quite a bit of stuff that obviously happened of the page, I was really pleased. More specifically on the relationship, Kai had some major personal growth that I enjoyed seeing, Nathan had a bit of relationship growth himself in realizing he can't just go it all alone, and it was really nice to see how their relationship is shaking out. I'll look forward to seeing more of them in the future. I'm already lusting after Mind Games, and the teaser at the end of this book doesn't even have any of our recognizable characters in it.

5 stars

Review - The Hot Zone

The Hot Zone
by Jayne Castle

This is book 11 in the Harmony series and  book 3 (or 4 depending on how you are counting) in the Rainshadow series. This is obviously not a stand-alone novel, at all. You could maybe get away with reading just the Rainshadow novels, but really, the whole Harmony series is a lot of fun and dust bunnies are completely awesome! What casual readers may or may not know, is that Jayne Castle is also Jayne Ann Krentz is also Amanda Quick. Jayne Castle is her futuristic (with paranormal) pen name under which she is writing the Harmony/Rainshadow series. Jayne Ann Krentz is her contemporary (some of which is also paranormal) pen name under which she has or currently is writing the following series: Eclipse Bay, Arcane, and Dark Legacy. And Amanda Quick is her historical (some of which is also paranormal) pen name under which she writes The Ladies of Lantern Street and Arcane. And there are some trilogies that fit into the larger series that span through time and are written under each pen name, like Looking Glass Trilogy and Dreamlight Trilogy.  Confused yet? Well you don't have to be. Most of the time you don't actually have to cross genres and pen names to enjoy the stories, there doesn't seem to be too much the casual reader needs to enjoy most of the books. However, if you do follow or read all of them there are fun connections between events and characters that just make everything so much more fun.

So, back to The Hot Zone. Harmony is a futuristic world where 200 years in their past, a curtain opened between that world and earth. Colonists started coming over and everything was fine until the curtain suddenly closed stranding them away from earth and her technology. Conditions on Harmony were a bit different from earth, so long story short, people started developing psychic talents and the means to control them and they also started bonding with dust bunnies. They also discover that aliens previously lived on this planet, and though they are gone, they left tunnels and artifacts behind. (This may sound like Castle's St. Helen's Trilogy, but it isn't. I consider those books to be kind of like proto-Harmony books, but they aren't connected though some of the themes and world building a very similar). This particular book features Sedona Snow (which if you have read the Eclipse Bay series ought to ring all sorts of bells), her faithful dust bunny Lyle, and Cyrus Jones (yes, one of those Jones's). Cyrus has been brought on to Rainshadow Island as the Guild Boss for the newly established Rainshadow Guild. Shenanigans are had, mysteries are solved, dust bunnies have a superb time, and two people who think they may just be all wrong for each other turn out to be exactly right.

So, yes, these books are formulaic in the extreme. But somehow, they almost always turn out to be more than the sum of their parts. The characters have different talents, different struggles and (sometimes) different personalities. Plus, there are dust bunnies and I just can't emphasize enough how they are really just as enjoyable as the romance. I find myself picking this series up and re-reading on a somewhat regular basis. They are fun, and they are fun the second or even third time you read them. And that is without all the tiny little linkings to all those other series. Digging in to the linkings just increases the fun factor, for me, exponentially.

Review- Magic Breaks

Magic Breaks
Ilona Andrews

Book 7 of the Kate Daniels series is finally here and I can't believe I have a whole year at least to till the next one (fortunately a Dali and Jim story is coming at the end of November).

First things first, I re-read this book twice before feeling able to write this review. If you are a longtime fan of this series, you are likely to either love it or hate it. If you are not a longtime fan of this series, despite the handy intro to all things Kate Daniels at the front, don't start here, it won't be worth your time, the ride to finding out everything is what is important-not the culmination. And if you haven't read this book already, just stop now, this book is highly polarizing and honestly, why on earth should my opinions matter to you?

Now that I have that out of the way, excuse me while I squee. I adore this book, this series, and these authors. YES, I adored this book (no, it won't hurt my feelings that people think I am fan-girling). Did I love everything about it? No, particularly the Mauro thing, but I don't expect things to always be happy and sunshiny roses with unicorn rainbows. But this book was so much the culmination of Kate's personal growth, the culmination of her relationships with people, and their relationships with her, that I could not help but love it. I keep reading reviews where people are irked about Kate supposedly acting out of character, and I suppose if you compare her to how she was presented in Magic Bites, you would be right. But here's the thing, she has grown and changed, and so have the people around her, and I can't help thinking how inexpressibly boring this series would be if we were still dealing just with bad assed merc Kate. Traitors, allies, and frenemies are revealed, lives are changed, and YES Roland, and (yuck) Hugh. Turns out the world is a whole lot stranger than Kate (or us readers) ever thought. And to me the ending totally makes up for Curran's BS in the last book (YMMV). The other things I tend to see people complain about are deus ex machina and plot devices and that things weren't done creatively enough (often from the same reviewer). So, in my opinion, yes, some things were unavoidably twisty, and yes, you saw some things coming a mile a way, but it felt like a fairly good balance between making things creative and unique and avoiding the plot device of having everything be a surprise JUST for the audience gasps. Sometimes a spade is just a spade. There were things that were a bit more exciting and emotional than I expected, and things that hit a lower note than I expected, but putting it all together it felt like exactly the story we have been leading up to, even when it wasn't precisely what I was expecting. 

And if you want some spoilers straight from Ilona's words, read here.