Movie Review: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016)

Movie #20 of 2017:

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016)

If you consider this movie as an attempt to recapture the magic (pun very much intended) of Harry Potter, it’s hard to see it as anything but a failure. The stakes are muddled, this version of the Wizarding World feels more hazily drawn, and Newt’s personal story just isn’t as compelling as Harry’s. Taken in its own right, the situation is a little better, although I do think the script needed another draft or two to really iron out what was going on and why these characters were involved. The Graves/Creedence relationship is the most egregious case, but the whole thing overall could have benefited from a rewrite.

That being said, Newt Scamander himself was a perpetual delight, a protagonist who’s so obviously on the autism spectrum that my heart overflowed every time he was on the screen. I still think this was a largely missed opportunity for more diverse casting, given the relatively blank slate of the Fantastic Beasts franchise, but I’m really happy with the acting and directing choices that brought this rendition of Newt to life.

★★★☆☆

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TV Review: The West Wing, season 6

TV #46 of 2017:

The West Wing, season 6

Oh man, late West Wing is such a mixed bag. I think season 5 is unquestionably the worst, and that lingers a little bit into the start of this next one. The primary campaign is a real shot of adrenaline, though, and it definitely works as a soft reboot for the show. (It helps that Matt Santos is forever bae.) Unfortunately, from here on out, we divide our time between the campaign trail and the understaffed White House, and those latter stories struggle to be as compelling as they once were. It’s still good stuff, as is the next and final season that maintains that balance into the general election, but I almost would rather the focus had switched over to the campaigns exclusively, rather than continuing to check in on the second-stringers propping up the last hurrahs of the Bartlet administration.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: The Bazaar of Bad Dreams by Stephen King

Book #238 of 2017:

The Bazaar of Bad Dreams by Stephen King

Another solid collection of short fiction from author Stephen King. The standout entry is Ur, a Dark Tower-adjacent novella about an e-reader that can access books from alternate realities, but King also offers up some delightful creepiness in Morality, Under the Weather, and That Bus Is Another World, all of which feature protagonists we probably wouldn’t want to spend a whole novel with. Most of the rest of the stories are good but unremarkable, but if you’re a King constant reader, you’ll likely be satisfied with what he’s got on offer here.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier

Book #237 of 2017:

My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier

As with Daphne du Maurier’s earlier novel Rebecca, My Cousin Rachel is the sort of dark and gothic book Gillian Flynn might have written had she been born half a century earlier. In this one, narrator Philip Ashley’s cousin is abroad in Italy when he falls in love, gets married, and promptly dies, leaving his widow to make her way back to Philip’s English estate. He’s suspicious of the role Rachel played in his cousin’s death, even as he finds himself falling in love with her himself. There’s a delightful tension here for readers to try and work out whether Rachel is a conniving murderess or Philip is a deluded manchild, and although it seems pretty clear which reading du Maurier intended to be correct, she never quite confirms it beyond all reasonable doubt.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Seraphina by Rachel Hartman

Book #236 of 2017:

Seraphina by Rachel Hartman (Seraphina #1)

This novel depicts a fascinating world in which dragons and humans were once enemies but now live under an uneasy peace, with the dragons who take on human form (for diplomacy, study, or trade) forced to publicly identify themselves and live in ghettos within human cities. Each side views fraternization with the other as close to heresy, and the ultra-logical dragons don’t even seem to understand the human concept of love – yet when Seraphina’s mother dies giving birth to the girl, her silver blood reveals to her shocked husband that she had been an unregistered dragon all along.

Mixed children like Seraphina aren’t supposed to exist, and keeping her true nature hidden becomes more difficult than ever when she teams up with a handsome human prince to investigate a suspicious death that could shatter the peace treaty between her peoples. I loved this allegorical fantasy way of exploring issues of race, heritage, and apartheid, especially with author Rachel Hartman subtly presenting Seraphina’s insight into dragon and human customs and her ability to navigate both those worlds as strengths rather than flaws.

Some unnecessary flashbacks and memory palace antics kept me from fully loving this book, but Seraphina is a great character for anyone feeling stuck between two sides of themselves, and I look forward to seeing where her story goes from here.

★★★★☆

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Book Review: Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuire

Book #235 of 2017:

Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuire (Wayward Children #2)

This is a dark little fairy tale about twin sisters who fall into a world of vampires and mad scientists and must make choices about who they want to be as they grow up. It’s technically a prequel to the author’s earlier novella Every Heart a Doorway, but the two plots are largely independent and can really be read in either order. As with its predecessor, I wanted this to be a full novel instead of a novella, because there are some abbreviated moments that I would have liked to see fleshed out in more detail. Nevertheless, it’s a powerful look at how stifling parental expectations can be, and at the lengths children might take to escape them, if they could only find the right door.

★★★★☆

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TV Review: House of Cards, season 5

TV #45 of 2017:

House of Cards, season 5

We had watched all but the last two episodes of this season before the Kevin Spacey news broke, and we finally got around to finishing it up. Even if you set aside everything we now know about the star actor, this was a pretty awful season of television (hence why it took us so long to get through it). Characters have no stable motivations or relationships with one another, the Underwoods can somehow see every political move coming a million miles away and still make really really senseless missteps, and the plot makes no sense and carries no weight. I really liked this show for the first season or two, but it had become a shell of itself even before Netflix fired its lead. Maybe the next (final) season will reinvent itself without Spacey, but I’m not exactly holding my breath.

★☆☆☆☆

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Movie Review: Thor: Ragnarok (2017)

Movie #19 of 2017:

Thor: Ragnarok (2017)

By far the best Thor movie, and one of the better Marvel Cinematic Universe movies overall. Lots of humor, neat worldbuilding, and actual character growth for Thor and Loki! It could have done better by its female characters, but all in all it was a fun ride and a reminder of why we all fell in love with Marvel movies in the first place.

★★★★☆

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Book Review: The Book of Swords edited by Gardner Dozois

Book #234 of 2017:

The Book of Swords edited by Gardner Dozois

This is a collection of short stories in the “sword and sorcery” genre, which as far as I can tell is fantasy on the smaller scale, with no evil overlords threatening the world. (I’d say the stakes are lower than epic fantasy, but if a story is well told, it should still mean everything to its characters.) Not every story in this book has swords, and not every story has sorcery, but they all share a general focus on scrappy adventurers dealing with the problems immediately in front of them. It’s probably not a book I’d reread, but it introduced me to some new authors to watch and featured some new material from old favorites like Garth Nix, Robin Hobb, and Scott Lynch. Some stories are better than others, but it’s an overall solid collection.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: The Obelisk Gate by N. K. Jemisin

Book #233 of 2017:

The Obelisk Gate by N. K. Jemisin (The Broken Earth #2)

As this series goes along, it’s starting to feel like author N. K. Jemisin is more interested in showing off her admittedly awesome and intricate worldbuilding than in telling a story with compelling emotional stakes for her characters. It’s still a good read, but a large portion of the plot is just people figuring out their world’s mysteries, and that’s keeping the series from becoming truly great. (This middle book in the trilogy also suffers in comparison to its predecessor, which took greater stylistic and narrative risks than this more streamlined and conventional sequel.)

★★★☆☆

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