Reviews of Science Fiction and Fantasy novels by Jessica Strider, a former bookseller and avid reader. You'll also find shout-outs to SFF books, medieval history book reviews, tidbits and more.
I worked at the World's Biggest Bookstore in Toronto for 10 years, until it closed in 2014. During my time there I planned themed endcaps and did author interview displays.
For several years I contributed book reviews, New Author Spotlight posts and a Recommended Readings with Professionals column on the SF Signal website.
I've got a BA in Medieval History from the University of Toronto.
I'm an avid photographer and crafter, and started making my own greeting cards a few years ago.
You can't militarize space. This one rule has led to decades of peaceful development of space programs worldwide. However, increasing resource scarcity and a changing climate on Earth's surface is causing some interested parties to militarize, namely India, the North American Union, and the Sinese Federation.
The discovery of a strange artifact by Dr. Alayna Wong precipitates a crisis. What appears to be a hitherto undiscovered comet is soon revealed to be an alien structure on a cometary trajectory toward the sun. Now there is a race between countries to see who can study and control the artifact dubbed the "Solar Express" before it perhaps destroys itself.
Leading the way for the North American Union is Alayna's friend, Captain Christopher Tavoian, one of the first shuttle pilots to be trained for combat in space. But, as the alien craft gets closer to its destination, it begins to alter the surface of the sun in strange new ways, ways that could lead Alayna to revolutionary discoveries-provided Chris can prevent war from breaking out as he navigates among the escalating tensions between nations.
A few years back Tor partnered with NASA to create a series of books that focused on concepts that were important to the current and future work of the space agency. Solar Express is one of those NASA-Inspired Works of Fiction (NIWoF).
I was given a One Lovely Blog Award by S. C. Flynn. It's one of the awards that goes around the internet as half introduction, half chain letter (where you nominate other blogs to do the same). This one asks the recipient to tell 7 interesting facts about themselves. While there are rules to do so, I won't be passing this on.
So, here are 7 - hopefully - interesting facts about me.
1. I taught English as a foreign language in Japan for 2 years at a private conversation school. The school I worked for encouraged us to hang out with our (mostly) adult students, so I got to know a lot about Japan, Japanese culture, and interesting places to visit. I lived several hours North of Tokyo, so I got to see a lot of areas most tourists don't generally go.
2. When I came back from Japan I used some of the money I saved to travel around Europe for 4 months. I used it as a research trip to supplement my medieval studies BA. I saw an amazing number of castles and cathedrals, gardens and towns.
3. I've completed 2 novels that aren't worth publishing, but which taught me a lot about the craft of writing and the dedication and drive necessary to be an author. I spend my time reading, rather than writing nowadays. It's much easier.
4. I was lucky enough to work Ad Astra (a small Toronto sf conference that's focused on the art and business of writing) the year Terry Brooks was a guest of honour. He's the author that got me hooked on fantasy and I had the privilege of selling him a copy of his own Elfstones of Shannara.
5. I started interviewing authors for displays at the bookstore (and then published them on this blog) to show customers how much time and effort went into writing a book. The Canadian dollar was high at the time and we were getting a lot of complaints about the high cost of books in Canada when compared with their US prices (both of which are printed on the backs of the books). Things got so bad I actually had one customer throw books at me when I was working cash. Aren't people wonderful?
6. I love travelling and have an ever expanding list of places I want to visit. I love learning about new cultures and trying new foods.
7. My non SF/Fantasy hobbies include photography, cooking, and making my own greeting cards. I was pretty crafty/artsy as a kid. I taught myself how to draw, but need a model to do it well (aside from faces). My hobbies are all time consuming, so I don't get to do as much artsy stuff as I'd like especially since I started reviewing a book a week for this blog.
Pros: excellent special effects, horrifically creepy titans, some interesting characters, learn origin of titans, thought provoking
Cons: unnecessarily excessive shaky cam, LOTS of blood and gore, some caricature characters, ending has a confusion of action
It’s been a hundred years since the three circles of walls were built to keep the man eating titans out. Some inhabitants are starting to question the necessity of the walls and even in the titans are real. Suddenly the titans breach the wall and the horrifying reality of the titans is revealed.
I went into the film knowing nothing more than what the trailers said about it. I haven’t read the manga or watched the anime. So this review will only reference the film and won’t contain any comparisons between the stories across media (except to say that the people in costume in the row in front of us mentioned that the character Levi isn’t in the film).
There is a lot of blood in this film. Now, that’s not surprising given the premise of man eating monsters, but there was a LOT of blood, and dismembered body parts, and people being crushed (sometimes with ridiculous ease and a giant explosion of blood). The first half of the first film is especially horrific, as the titans wade through a town, killing indiscriminately. The rest of the film, while still bloody, isn’t quite so bad.
There’s also a lot of shaky cam. While a few scenes benefitted from the effect - like the introduction
of the titans when the ground starts to shake - it’s often entirely unnecessary - like during the animated historical briefing title sequence. As with the blood, it’s especially noticeable in the first part, though that could be because I was used to it by the time the second part started.
The special effects were, on the whole, amazing. The design for the titans was awesome, though the first titan you see (the one on the poster above) isn’t representative of what titans look like en mass. That titan looks like muscle on a skeleton with smoke coming out of the joints, while regular titans are gigantic humans with extra long mouths and offset features, like eyes too far apart. They’re creepy and - at times - hilarious in a horrible kind of way, though some also look kind of goofy. The end result is very creepy, especially as they’re tearing people apart and/or eating them whole.
You’re slowly introduced to three characters who play important roles in the fill, Eren (Haruma Miura), Mikasa (Kiko Mizuhara) and Armin (Kanata Hongo, who was also in the live action Gantz movie). You’re given more information about them and their motivations than you are for the characters you meet in a more rushed way later. In fact, later in the film you meet so many new characters it’s a challenge keeping them all straight and I didn’t remember more than one or two of their names afterwards.
A few of the characters are basically caricatures and are clearly carried over from the manga. Hange, a woman obsessed with titans and weapons is the best example of this. She’s played mostly for comedic effect, but her actions seem starkly out of place given the grave nature of what’s happening in the film.
The teenage girls in the row behind us found one scene late in the first part that made them titter and laugh. It’s a short scene and not graphic.
While I thought the ‘flying’ weapon get up was cool - and looked amazing when really skilled people, like Captain Shikishima used it - but recognized that it wouldn’t actually work in real life. It propels you too quickly, there isn’t always something to hook into, and on the whole would be impossible to learn how to use effectively without killing yourself in the process (or the first time you tried to use it in battle). But it does look cool on screen.
I was really happy that part 2 of the film explains the origins of the titans. And while the film didn’t answer every question, it did answer the major ones. My husband found the ending a bit overdone in terms of the variety of action and character inclusion, though it was quite exciting to watch.
The film does raise some questions about how people use fear to control others, whether rebellions are good or worse than the regimes they’re trying to replace, the nature of humanity, the uses of science, the desire for freedom, etc. I love it when I spend the next day trying to parse what I’ve seen.
It’s not a film I feel I need to own, but it was an interesting story and I’m glad I saw it.
It is perhaps a hundred years in the future, our civilization is gone, and another is in place in North America, but it retains many familiar things and structures. Although the population is now small, there is advanced technology, there are robots, and there are clones.
E. A. Smithe is a borrowed person. He is a clone who lives on a third-tier shelf in a public library, and his personality is an uploaded recording of a deceased mystery writer. Smithe is a piece of property, not a legal human.
A wealthy patron, Colette Coldbrook, takes him from the library because he is the surviving personality of the author of Murder on Mars. A physical copy of that book was in the possession of her murdered father, and it contains an important secret, the key to immense family wealth. It is lost, and Colette is afraid of the police. She borrows Smithe to help her find the book and to find out what the secret is. And then the plot gets complicated.
This is a documentary on HEMA, Historical European Martial Arts. It's a long video, but it's split into 9 chapters, so if you don't have time for the whole thing, you can skip to the parts that interest you.
From their youtube page:
A look into the world of Historical European Martial Arts, where a community revives centuries old martial arts based on the research and study of period source material.
Introduction: (3 mins 18 sec) @ 0:00:01
Chapter 1: What is HEMA? (11 mins 52 secs) @ 0:03:20
Chapter 2: How Does it Work? (9 mins 54 secs) @ 0:15:12
Chapter 3: Research (6 mins 48 secs) @ 0:25:04
Chapter 4: The Validity of HEMA (11 mins 4 secs) @ 0:31:52
Chapter 5: HEMA Today (12 mins 26 secs) @ 0:42:56
Chapter 6: Equipment (9 mins 2 secs) @ 0:55:22
Chapter 7: HEMA Identity (7 mins 24 secs) @ 1:04:24
Chapter 8: Competitions in HEMA (10 mins 32 secs) @ 1:11:48
Chapter 9: The Community (5 mins 38 secs) @ 1:22:20
Closing Credits: (1 min 14 secs) @1:27:58
I learned several interesting things from watching this, one of which is that there's more than one way to correctly hold the hilt of a sword, including a kind of backwards, hands intertwined grip.
I also remember hearing criticism of a fantasy cover a few years back which showed a knight holding the hilt of his sword with one hand and the blade with the other. Well, apparently that was a form of fighting employed against knights in armour - a means of turning their longsword into a halberd or other tool that was more effective than a sword at getting into the cracks in armour. I couldn't find the cover, but I did find this article on longsword fighting with the following fencing manuscript photo (as well as several others).
If you want to do some research into manuscripts and European sword fighting, the video mentions Wiktenaur.com, which is a free library of books and manuscripts.
The year is 1919 and a riot and explosions rock San Francisco’s St Patrick’s Day parade, the perpetrators targeting a young woman in the crowd. Captain Gabe Ryon tries to figure out the connection between the attack and the growing number of murdered Russian immigrants. Meanwhile his wife, Delia, is haunted by the ghost of a European princess.
The novel is split between Gabe and Delia’s efforts to understand what’s happening and stop the murders. It’s great seeing how the investigation covers both procedural and spiritualist methods. The mystery is intense, with a lot of twists.
It’s a real joy seeing a book that has several loving couples and deep friendships. While you can read this book independently of the previous two in the series (Delia’s Shadow and A Barricade in Hell), you’ve definitely got a deeper sense of the relationships and how the characters have come to trust and rely on each other if you’ve read the other books.
Perhaps that’s why the books, though dealing with disturbing subject matter, leave one with a feeling of positivity. There’s a good amount of death and darkness, but the stories read more like cosy mysteries than hardboiled detective fiction.
It’s a fast paced book that makes good use of an interesting time and setting. This is a series I highly recommend.
Posts
You can't militarize space. This one rule has led to decades of peaceful development of space programs worldwide. However, increasing resource scarcity and a changing climate on Earth's surface is causing some interested parties to militarize, namely India, the North American Union, and the Sinese Federation.
