Pat's Book Reviews: Robopocalypse

I'm just going to go ahead and get the comparison out of the way first. Robopocalypse is the robot uprising version of World War Z. There's no way to deny that. It seems that Daniel H. Wilson is the Max Brooks of robots. Whereas Mr. Brooks wrote The Zombie Survival Guide, a handbook for surviving a zombie apocalypse, Mr. Wilson wrote How To Survive A Robot Uprising. Typically, this would annoy me about an author as I would just assume that Wilson is copying what Max Brooks does, but just inserts robots instead of zombies. I think the reason that I'm ok with Wilson doing what he does is because, as opposed to Brooks, Wilson has a Ph.D. in robotics, so he clearly loves what he's writing about as much as Brooks does.

As I said, Robopocalypse is very similar to World War Z in that it too is written in a post war manner by a surivor who is now recounting the war and it's highlight moments. Instead of having a UN inspector compiling a report for a counsel like what happens in World War Z, Robopocalypse's narrator is a common foot soldier named Cormac Wallace who stumbles upon a detailed data core shortly after humanity defeats the robot leader who started the war. This data core contains details on how the robot uprising started and follows key figures through the ensuing war that raged across the planet. The book is supposed to be the result of Cormac transcribing what he finds in the data core to paper.

What works best about this book is that unlike World War Z, this story focuses more specifically on a smaller cast of characters, which it follows from shortly before the outbreak of the war to it's completion (or their death along the way). Having a core cast that the reader could connect with and care about added to the emotional drama and tension of the story. When a character dies in Robopocalypse, it means something. That was something World War Z lacked in my opinion. Written as if it was a committee report, it was incapable of adding a deep, personal narrative.

What doesn't work for Robopocalypse is the pacing. It's far too quickly paced in my opinion and the story keeps jumping ahead by months at a time. The book is only 340 pages or so, but it could have easily been 500 or 600 pages and I would have been totally fine with that. The characters are interesting and different, the story has a lot of possibility and the period of the war and it's build up covers almost 4 years of time. As I was reading the book I kept wishing the author would slow down and take more time with certain things. As it was, the book is fun, but it flys by at a breakneck speed. As a result, it loses out on a lot of potential depth it could have had if it had just taken the time to move a little slower.

As for the uprising itself, I very much enjoyed how it all went down. The story is set in a slightly futuristic society where household robots are commonplace and all modern cars are either computer controlled or computer assisted. When Archos, the superintelligent A.I. that begins the uprising, is created he quickly subverts these machines and uses them against humanity. It's a mark of all true science fiction to be a stern warning about mankind's reliance upon technology, and that is a point that is brought home rather brutally in Robopocalypse as literally billions of people are killed by their service robots or are run over by their own cars. It's bloody as hell, but it's a fun read.

Overall, the book makes for a fun, quick read. It lacks the level of detail that Brooks brought to World War Z, but it makes up for that with a more human approach to the storytelling. Robopocalypse is certainly no masterpiece of literature, but it does have high value as being the literary equivalent of a cheesy popcorn action flick. No wonder Stephen Speilberg is in talks to direct a film adaptation of it. This story lends itself beautifully to a silver screen translation. I just wish the book was a little longer.

Final Grade: B-

Pat's Book Review - Deathtroopers

 

When Deathtroopers was first announced back in February, I thought it was a joke at first.  A Star Wars horror book?  No way!  Star Wars has always been a very PG universe.  That means no explicit sex and no major blood and gore.  Did you ever notice how everyone ever shot with a Blaster or sliced in half with a Lightsaber never bleeds?  That's what I'm talking about.  PG Universe.  So the idea of a dark and disturbing horror story set in the Star Wars universe just didn't seem like a realistic possibility to me.  When I saw the cover of the book (pictured above), I thought it was some sort of prank.  And when I found out the book was supposed to be about zombies, I was even more convinced it was a joke.

 

But color me suprised, it was real.  Lucasfilm had agreed to allow a known horror writer named Joe Schreiber to write a full-on R rated horror story set in the Star Wars universe.  Being the fan of both Star Wars and zombies that I am, you can imagine that I was pretty excited.  I've spent the last few months eagerly awating October when I would get to read a tale that blended two of my favorite genres into one.  Well, that time has finally come.  The book came out a few weeks ago, I have finally read it, and I am here to share my opinions.

 

Before we get going though, I am going to throw out a MASSIVE SPOILER WARNING here.  I'm not going to reveal every single plot point in the story, but there is definitely one major suprise in the book that I am going to discuss as it pertains directly to some of my thoughts and feelings about the book.  So consider yourself warned.  Ok, here we go.

 

Let's begin with a brief summary of the plot set up, shall we?  Death Troopers is a story that takes place about a year before the events of Episode IV:  A New Hope.  The Empire is firmly in charge of the galaxy, the rebellion has started up and is going strong, Alderaan is still around and the name Luke Skywalker hasn't been heard of by anyone other than some punk kids on Tattooine.  We begin aboard an Imperial prison barge called The Purge as it is flying out to a remote penal colony to drop off a bunch of prisoners.  On board along with hundreds of other prisoners are two teenage boys named Kale and Trig Longo.  They and their father had been arrested for being petty grifters a few weeks back.  Their father had been killed on board the Purge a week or so earlier by a prison guard named Jareth Sartoris, and now the boys had been left to fend for themselves. 

 

They run afoul of a prison gang pretty quickly and are very much worried for their lives when the day-in and day-out routines aboard the prison barge are suddenly interrupted by a major mechanical failure of the ship's engines.  While still a long ways away from the prison colony, the ship drops out of hyperspace in the middle of nowhere.  The Imperial officers running the ship determine that their engines are completely shot as well as the long distance communications systems.  With no ability to go anywhere or call for help, the Purge finds itself in a very desperate state.  Luckily for them though, their sensors are picking up an Imperial Star Destroyer close by. 

 

Something's strange though.  The Star Destroyer isn't responding to any of their hails.  The ship's systems are running, but only a dozen or so life signs are registered on board the massive craft which typically has a crew of 10,000.  Not knowing what else to do though, the Purge's captain orders two teams to board the Star Destroyer to try to find out what's happing over there and to possibly salvage repair parts for their own engines.  Jareth Sartoris ordered to command the teams. 

 

On board the Star Destroyer, no signs of life are found.  It's as if all of the ship's crew had just up and vanished.  Jareth's teams split up and go searching for parts.  A little while later, after some searching, his engineers find the parts they need to fix the Purge's engines.  They call the second team but get no response.  Figuring they must have already gone back to the Purge, Sartoris and his team return to the ship as well.  On the way back down to their ship though, something strange starts happening.  Two or three members of his team start showing severe signs of an infection.  They begin coughing and vomiting and suffering from seizures. 

 

Once back aboard the Purge, the team is taken to the medical bay where the chief medical officer, a woman by the name of Zahara Cody, attempts to treat them.  The disease is like nothing she's ever seen though, and soon enough she realizes that it has already spread throught the entire prison barge.  The disease is lethal too.  Within hours, over 99% of the ship's crew are dead.  The few survivors must have some natural immunity to the disease. 

 

It's here that the story really gets going.  The disease is obviously what creates the zombie army our survivors have to deal with.  At this point, the only people left alive are Dr. Cody, Kale and Trig , Officer Sartoris, and two unknown prisoners who had been holed up in solitary confinement this whole time.  More on those two in a bit though.  As a setup for the story, I was really hooked into how things were going.  One of my favorite things in a horror story is watching as the situation goes from normal to all sorts of messed up, and the author did a great job here.  The prison barge was already a crappy place to be stuck on at the beginning of the book, but as the disease spreads it goes from being crappy to being a living hell hole.  Dead bodies are everywhere, they've covered the walls and floors of the ship with vomit and blood and god knows what else from the disease.  The stink of death is everywhere aboard the Purge. 

 

As horror stories go, that's a pretty sweet setting.  I was really looking forward to seeing the dead stat to rise, and how our main characters would deal with them.  I was also really enjoying the fact that I was getting to read a Star Wars book that didn't have any major characters from the movie in it.  One of my biggest pet peeves about Star Wars books is the fact that the same characters are used over and over and over again.  Exactly how many times do Han, Luke and Leia have to save the galaxy anyways?  20?  30?  100?  In a story telling setting that is literally the size of a galaxy, why do we always have to go back to the same five people time and time again to save everyone?  Are you telling me that no one else is available to save the day for once?

 

My favorite Star Wars books by far have always been the X-Wing series by Michael Stackpole.  Aside from my love of X-Wings in general, this is because the majority of those books are about new characters we've never seen before.  Sure, some minor characters from the films like Wedge Antilles are there in force and you'll get the occasional one or two page cameo by Luke, but the vast majority of those stories were about characters who had never appeared in a movie.  That's a rarity in Star Wars books, and I was absolutely loving that this book was only featuring characters I'd never heard of before.  It was new people doing new stuff.  I was all for it.  Besides, how could you possibly include any of the major existing characters into a zombie story anyways.  That would be insane, right?

 

As I said, I was really enjoying the book's set up and was eagerly awaiting the arrival of the zombies when the ship's Dr. decides to head down to solitary confinement to try to save the two unknown prisoners that are down there.  This too had me excited as I had no idea who was down there and I was looking forward to more new characters to read about.  Soon enough, Dr. Cody gets down to solitary and opens the cells.  And then it happens.  On page 96 of the book, everything that I had been loving about the story so far entirely goes away.  On page 96, what was obviously meant to be a cool suprise for Star Wars fans takes place and not one, but two major characters from Star Wars lore step out of their cells and into this story that they really have no right being in.  On page 96 he swaggers out of his cell with a lop-sided grin a mile wide.

 

Han Fucking Solo.

 

Yeah, that's right, Han Solo and Chewie just happen to be prisoners aboard the ship that is about two seconds away from being introduced to a full on zombie apocalypse.  I'm pretty sure my jaw dropped when this happened.  I was shocked, and not in a good way.  I was not happy to see this development, no not at all.  I was angry.  Why the hell would you include Han Solo and Chewie into a story of this nature?  They were a total distraction to what the focus of the story should have been, the zombies and the survivors.  Han and Chewie are a known element.  We all know that there's no chance in hell that either of these two are going to die from a zombie bite, so any potential dramatic tension regarding them is completely non-existant.  It's like watching a horror film after being told in the opening credits who's going to live and who's going to die.  It sort of defeats the point.

 

The enjoyment of a good zombie story is getting to find out who lives and who dies.  Zombie stories are survival tales where we see a rag tag group of people who are forced to work together, and you know that most of them aren't going to make it.  Having Han and Chewie in there just ruined everything.  It was pretty obvious at that point who our survivors would be, and who was about to become zombie bait.  Who do you think will survive a zombie apocalypse, Han Solo or some random Imperial guard named Sartoris?  That's almost like asking who would die in a Star Trek away party, Kirk, Spock, McCoy or Ensign "No First Name" Johnson?

 

It's not that I don't like Han Solo.  I fucking love Han Solo and Chewbacca.  They (along with Lando) were my favorite characters from the original trilogy.  I love reading about them.  I've read tons of books about them.  However, I did not want to read about them here.  They would have been the last people I would have wanted to see in this story.  You can imagine then that I was highly disappointed at this point.  The book I had been waiting months for had just been ruined, but I was determined to try to enjoy the rest of it.  After all, it is a zombie book and I hadn't even gotten to the zombies yet.  I couldn't quit now.  So, pushing aside the bitter taste in my mouth, I plunged on.

 

I will admit, the rest of the book is decently entertaining.  It's not a great book by any means.  There's nothing mind blowing about it, but it definitely has some solid strengths going for it.  Author Joe Schreiber is a very talented horror writer.  He did an excellent job of making the story every bit as gory and gruesome and creepy as it should have been.  Never before in a Star Wars book have I read lurid details about peope's limbs being severed or intestines falling out.  Never have I ever read detailed descriptions about what happens to someone who takes a blaster shot to the face (it's really not pretty).  As a writer, Schreiber excels at conveying the dark and bloody world of Death Troopers.  This definitely isn't your typical Star Wars book.  This is something far uglier, and I mean that in the best way possible.

 

The book is also rather short (only 234 pages or so), and it's paced very well.  It's a quick and easy read and at no point did I feel that the story felt bogged down or slow.  The ending is a little abrupt though and felt a little anti-climatic.  I was expecting some big action sequence near the end where they blew up the Star Destroyer or something, but that never really happened.  On the plus side though, the story is entirely self contained.  No prior knowledge of Star Wars other than the movies is required to enjoy this book.  Even if you've never read a Star Wars book before, you can still pick this up and be completely entertained.  I liked that a lot as most Star Wars books these days are heavily steeped in expanded universe crap to the point where if you haven't read every other Star Wars book first, you'll have no idea what's going on.

 

Overall, the book is fun.  It's entertaining and will definitely appeal to both fans of Star Wars or zombies.  However, it's a bit short and the inclusion of Han and Chewie was a really poor decision in my opinion.  Maybe it's just me, but I think it's entirely possible to have a good Star Wars book that doesn't feature any characters from the film at all.  I think Death Troopers would have been better had Han and Chewie not been it it.

 

Final Grade:  3 Stars out of 5

Wes' Book Review - Twilight: Eclipse

 

When we last left Bella, Jacob Black had just simultaneously thrown a wrench in her plans to become a Vampire and gotten her grounded for a really long time by revealing ton her father that she owned a motorcycle (go team Jacob!).  What's a girl to do? I guess plan on fleeing as soon as you're graduated to Alaska where you will pretend to be attending college, but actually have your boyfriend, Edward, attend to you as to make sure you don't kill anyone in your fresh vampire blood lust. While this is going on we hear of an every rising body count in nearby Seattle (dead people!? I'm listening), which not only Charlie Swan (as a police officer) is interested in, but something the Cullen's have been keeping an eye on. Because much like a Harry Potter book, there's no such thing as a coincidence.

 

Bella is soon relieved of her punishment of being grounded, on the stipulation she tries to spend more time with people other than her vampire boyfriend. Mostly what her father means is, Jacob Black, who he prefers far over Edward (and I did too, way to ruin the one good character, but I'm getting ahead of myself here). Edward uses the new found freedom to bring up that Carlisle and Esme (his "parents") had given Bella tickets to visit her mother Renee in Jacksonville Florida for her birthday. So Bella and Edward visit Florida, only for her mother Renee to say something along the lines of "wow you two really are inseparable and he seems to always be protecting you". Bella writes her mother off by making her feel crazy, which I guess is what happens when you used to seem like a pretty decent girl, and somehow in the course of three books became kind of conniving.

 

Bella and Edward return and Jacob has been calling all kinds panicked after ignoring Bella's calls before she left for Florida. Being inept, Bella doesn't realize that her trip away could have meant she was changed into a vampire, thus starting an all out war between the Cullens and the werewolves. Jacob even goes to Bella's school to make sure she hasn't been changed yet and there's a little stand-off between Jacob and Edward, sadly though, neither bothers to entertain ME by tearing the others arms off a'la Chewbacca (be patient Wes, it'll come eventually). So Jacob tells Bella that Victoria (the red haired Vampire that's hunting Bella for revenge against Edward for her fallen love James, a vampire who hunted Bella in the first book, and was killed by the Cullens) came back into town looking for her, and that was the reason Edward actually took her to Florida.

 

Since Alice can see the future (a skill that seems to get a little more powerful in each book as to the suit the storyline) Bella decides after getting the day off from work unexpectedly to race down to LaPush to see Jacob before Edward can stop her. Edward's still apprehensive about letting Bella hang out with werewolves because they might accidentally kill her, even if the viewpoint is only slightly more hypocritical than when Bella assumed the werewolves were the ones killing people in New Moon. Bella fills Jacob in on the events that took place in Italy and Jacob fills Bella in on the entire story of when Victoria was in town and how it almost came down to a fight between Cullens and the werewolves because there might have been some territory crossing. Jacob tells Bella about imprinting, which I've heard about in groundhogs before (thank you Margo Handwerker), but evidently werewolves do also. What happens is once they lay eyes on someone, they fall instantly in love with that person and will do anything to be around them, to protect them, and be whatever it is they need. It had already happened to members of the werewolf pack, once between the leader Sam and his girlfriends cousin (ouchy!), another time between one of the werewolves and a girl that sat next to him in school, and thirdly on a two year old girl.

 

Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you Stephenie Meyer? I don't care about the character, I'm concerned about you, for thinking about that. Lets not dwell because that might be an entire article to itself just there, but I don't care about the myth here, that's just icky.

 

Things are heating up, and when Edward leaves town to kill some big game and drink it's blood, he leaves Bella in the care of Alice, against Bella's will, because all she wants to do is go hang out with werewolves again. Though this does give Rosalie the chance to tell her story about how she became a vampire. An upper middle class potential trophy wife to be, Rosalie is the prettiest of the Cullens. Basically she becomes betrothed to an asshole without knowing it, is attacked by her drunken fiance who left her to die in the snow. Carlisle felt bad for the pretty frostbitten girl and turned her. There's even a pretty cool, albeit overly dramatic, story about her getting her revenge on the fiance. Complete with Rosalie wearing the wedding-dress-to-be while murdering him. You know, the kind of stuff these books could use heaping more spoonfuls of. Rosalie does all of this though to give Bella something to chew on as per what she would be giving up by becoming a vampire, the simple things like having kids and, well, that's pretty much about it.

 

After school, Jacob uses Alice's gap in her vision of the future surrounding werewolves to sneak up and steal Bella away to the reservation again. Though the visit doesn't last long as Jacob tells Bella he would rather her be dead than turned into a vampire. Smooth. Though this last trip to LaPush is what makes Edward realize he's just bigoted against werewolves and he really isn't ever going to be able to stop Bella from seeing Jacob anyways (plus we all know what happens to teenage girls when you tell them to not do something). Bella returns from being held captive/being by watched by Alice to a note from her dad that Jacob had called to apologize and that she's missing things from her room. Edward comes into her room and smells a vampire, but it's not Victoria (thank GAWD, this story needed more vampires badly). Bella of course forgives Jacob and calls to accept his apology. Edward asks for the phone so he can inform the werewolves to be on the lookout for vampires who aren't ginger harbingers of Isabella Swan death. The conversation leads to Edward and Jacob starting to get the werewolves and the Cullen family to work together.

 

 

So Bella goes to the reservation to hang out with the pack for a night while they have a bonfire, tell some Quileute legends about the origins of their people, and how it was when the first vampires came to the northwest. Jacob is the great great great (I'm not sure how many greats) grandson of the first werewolf, Taha Aki. Evidently Taha lived long enough to have had three wives and this third wife, to protect him and their sons during a fight he was losing with a vampire, stabbed herself in the chest to send the vamp into blood lust. In it's frenzy for blood, it fought poorly, and lost to Taha Aki. Exactly the kind of thing you want to tell Bella about right?

 

So after some plot point reiteration, we get to another interesting part. Jasper's back story. So Jasper, the tall blonde weak-willed vampire of the Cullen family was changed during the Civil War by a trio of vampire women who wished to rule a territory south of Texas into Mexico. Being a vampire in the south is evidently different than the wandering nomad vampire that kills as needed in the north. There's gang warfare going on all over the place to fight over the territories with dense population where it would be easy for a vampire to feed. The covens would usually use the tactic of creating a bunch of fresh vampires to raid another coven's territory then trade out young vampires as needed.

 

I want to take a moment to give Meyer credit for something here, she added something to her vampire myth I'd never heard before, and being a credit where credit is due kind of dude, I have to point it out. Evidently the newly created vampire is the strongest form of vampire in the Twilight universe, as it's body and muscles still contain mostly human blood. As human blood is where pretty much EVERY vampire mythos says they derive their strength from, it would make sense that a vampire with a body still filled to the tippy top with human 0+ would easily be able to wreck a vampire who has to feed for every drop in his own body.

 

So anyways, back to Jasper. Jasper a former military man himself, made an excellent vampire war tactician, and helped another vampire Maria run what was the most successful coven in all of the south. Eventually Jasper was sick of all the warring and the killing and went on to run a ferry on the Me-Kong river, no wait, that was John Rambo. Jasper left Maria and began to wander with a couple of vampires when he eventually ran across Alice, who seeing the future, was waiting for him in a diner in Philly. Alice knew Jasper wanted out of the killing life and the two of them went to join the Cullens.

 

Bella goes down to visit Jacob on the reservation and this where Meyer completely ruins his character for me. Jacob flat out tells Bella he's in love with her, and she of course responds with "yeah I know, I love Edward" and all is pretty much like you figure it would be until he steals a kiss. When I say steals a kiss, I don't mean in the sweet way where he sneaks up on her and steals a quick kiss. I mean Jacob mouth rapes Bella while she protests and attempts to shove him off of her yelling "no!" the entire time. Even after Bella belts Jacob in the mouth hard enough to fracture a bone in her hand, Jacob is smug about how much he's certain his magic kiss will make Bella realize that she loves him back. In one terrible moment Meyer takes Jacob Black, the ONE character I can truly enjoy in these books and turns him into one of those douche-bags you see at a bar in a shirt with too much print on it and a beard trimmed like George Micheals in the 80's waiting to date rape the next girl that pays attention to them. No means no, never forget it kids.

 

So Bella graduates from high school. Alice throws a graduation party at the Cullen mansion and the entire school shows up out of curiosity. Even some of the werewolves show up, because Bella invited them before she was violated. Instead of tearing his arms off, Edward decides that it would be best if the werewolves and vampires could work together to defeat what they are now certain is a vampire army created by Victoria in Seattle. So, fucking, CLOSE arm tearing!

 

So that's the way of it. Jasper teaches the werewolves about how newborn vampires fight and they hatch a plan to lead Victoria's army to the clearing by using Bella's scent then hiding her on top of a mountain. Working together they're more than confident the can claim victory. So confident in fact that Bella pleads with Edward to stay with her out of the fight, because no matter how many times she sees with her own two eyes that these are super-humans with not unlike Superman invulnerability, she's out of her mind with fear that someone will get killed.

 

All of this is interspersed with Bella trying DESPERATELY to get Edwards penis inside of her. Somehow a night of Bella being determined to finally get some vamp wang turned into her finally breaking down and getting officially engaged to Edward, with the promise that he would TRY to break her off some, without breaking her neck and drinking all the blood from her body, before changing her into a vampire. Which evidently is a problem when you're a vampire trying to give it to a human. So Edward, in his old fashioned ways, doesn't give her anything but an engagement ring, which Bella refuses to wear anyways. Is there anything about Edward that won't make a girl swoon?

 

The fight between Victoria's army and the united Cullens and werewolves approaches fast and they hide Bella's scent by having Jacob carry her to the top of a mountain where she's to hide out the whole thing. A snowstorm overtakes her encampment on the hill so Edward, who has no body heat is forced to let Jacob spend the night with her in the sleeping bag while Bella in her half wakefulness listens to them have a conversation about their jealousy of one other and generally about what it's like being a vampire and werewolf.

 

So after Jacob leaves for the fight the next morning, Bella FINALLY comes to the conclusion about what a terrible person she is for leading Jacob on and sends Edward to bring him back. Jacob comes back and throws a mini temper tantrum about how he might as well go let a vampire kill himself because Bella is just going to hurt him more, and when Bella frantically thinks the worst of her supposed friend Jacob, he asks for a kiss. Basically saying "kiss me or I'll go kill myself". Meyer did everything her power to turn this character from decent guy into a douchebag date rapist extraordinaire. So Bella, queen gullible herself, asks Jacob to kiss her for real this time. Mid lip lock, it strikes Bella, she DOES love Jacob. Not as much as she loves Edward, but loves him none-the-less. Bella pictures what life would be like if they were together, the kids they would have, growing old together, the whole nine.

 

Like I needed MORE reasons to hate Bella. This little bitch can't even decide who she truly loves and who she doesn't, she's stuck between two men essentially, and she's positive she wants to be changed into a vampire for eons and eons?

 

The worst part? Edward doesn't even get pissed at her about it! Edward is never going to tear the arms off this guy no matter how bad I want it! Before I had time to vomit on the book and throw it across the room, the moment I've been waiting thousands of pages for had finally arrived. Fighting. Glorious warfare between vampires and werewolves. Oh where have you been through this whole thing. It arrives just in time to spare Edward from really explaining why he felt it was okay for Bella not only to kiss the mouth raping Jacob, but to break down into tears in her obvious love of him.

 

Jasper's plan works like gangbusters and the army follows Bella's scent right into the trap set by the united werewolves and Cullens. Except for Victoria and a new vampire by the name Riley. Seth, a werewolf left to send information between Edward and the pack, and Edward square off against Victoria and Riley. The fights are pretty much going well but Bella panics and pulls the third wife stunt by cutting her arm open with a jagged rock. The blood causes distraction like Bella hoped for and the fight is over shortly after. Edward even decapitates Victoria (hey decapitation is good). Edward burns the bodies of Riley and Victoria and they head back to see how everyone else fared.

 

 

When they get back to the scene of the real battle, Jane and a couple of the members of the Volturi show up to find themselves unneeded in the fight against the army. They were really hoping they could clean house on both the Cullens AND Victoria's army. The werewolves hide in the forest from the Volturi in the forest because I guess the Volturi don't know werewolves exist. Bella doesn't know it yet, but finds out quickly that Jacob was hurt in the fight trying to protect one of the younger werewolves who was fighting foolishly. Of course Jacob will be fine, werewolves heal quickly.

 

The story ends with Bella going to Jacob and telling him that even though he was right to believe that she did love him, she loves Edward so much more. They agree to stay friends in spite of the love between them. It concludes with Bella telling Edward she's prepared for everything now; to turn into a vampire, to say good bye to her family and friends, and to do it all the proper way with a wedding. Even after Edward sees this, and in his excitement says "we can run away to Vegas, no ceremony" Bella shows maturity (*GASP*!) and says she has to do it properly. Edward even tries to give Bella some hot Angel losing his soul to Buffy action, but she makes HIM wait this time.

 

My thoughts;

 

Even though Meyer decided to ruin the one character I was pulling for in the series with one swift kick to my I-give-a-shit gland, this was easily the strongest book so far. The pacing was finally consistent, and if the size of this review has anything to show for her effort, Meyer kept it going with plot points instead of relying heavily on the romance of the story. The romantic tensions between characters and soap opera drama between Bella, Edward, and Jacob this time played itself out as a single element of the story instead of being it's driving force as was attempted in the earlier books.

 

Fleshing out back stories for Jasper and Rosalie also finally started to show that characters outside of Bella were capable of depth, and again, it gave you a reason to at least care if they lived or died to an extent. In the earlier books most of the characters in the background were just that, background. No different than the trees or the high school. Hell I would have cared more in New Moon if Bella's truck died than if Rosalie did. Now I feel about the same about either Rosalie or the Truck dying.

 

The ridiculousness of Jacob forcing himself on Bella, then her inevitable coming back around to admitting her love for him was ridiculous, but not really beyond what I would expect from Meyer as a storyteller, it fit her M.O. if you will. This is a good sign though, as you can tell that it at least managed to illicit a reaction from me, instead of indifference or laughter which is all the prior books usually got from me, I found myself actually caring that Meyer was ruining a perfectly sensible character.

 

It all just goes to show what, as a guy, I'm willing to forgive in the end if you show me some vampires and werewolves killing one another. The body count in this book was acceptable finally, with enough giant bloody piles of Native Americans and vampires being burned throughout the book to hold my testosterone driven attention. A theme I REALLY hope continues in the next book.

Mattman's Weekly Batman Update

Hey,

 

We got three titles this week.

 

Batman# 691

Written by Judd Winick and Penciled by Mark Bagley

 



 

I am sad. This will be Judd Winick's last issue. That's right, they only gave him five issues. Now Batman will be written and illustrated by Tony Daniel, who is awesome but that doesn't mean I won't miss the fucktacularly awesome writing of Winick.

 

The issue picks up where the last left off, Two-Face has broken into the Batcave! Two-Face is wearing some odd-ball twisted version of a Batman costume. Just look at the image above. That's the crazy ass costume. But luckily he's not actually wearing that costume it's just Batman hallucinating due to drugs Two-Face had shot him with.

 

So a battle erupts: Two-Face versus Batman. All the while Two-Face is blabbing about how he knows that Dick is not the same Batman. Then another Batman shows up and shoots Batman with some darts. Dick pulls the darts out of his body goes crazy and savagely beats Two-Face, growling "I'm not like you Harvey, I can change  but... I STILL AM BATMAN!" Then Two-Face finally concedes "It..it is you..you son of a.."

 

It turns out that the other Batman that shot Dick was Alfred and he shot him with adrenaline. Then we cut to Two-Face being transported by cops to Blackgate Prison. The Police Transport is attacked and Two-Face is freed. It's a bunch of thugs lead by The Black Mask. Black Mask offers Two-Face a partnership. Two-Face turns him down.

 

I don't get the end because it begins with Dick and Alfred emptying out the Batcave. Are they going to create their own new Batcave? Or are they going to do away with having a Batcave altogether? I hope not that is the lamest thing I have ever heard of. Of course Christain Bale operated the whole last movie without a Batcave and he was still fuckawesome. Anyway, under the Jason Todd costume in the cave Dick discovers a flash drive and it contains info on his parents murders. Why was Bruce hiding this particular file? I guess we will have to wait to find our next issue.

 

Batgirl# 3

Written by Bryan Q. Miller and Penciled by Lee Garbett

 



 

Okay so as we discovered last issue the mastermind behind the drug thrill being given to kids at Batgirl's college is Scarecrow. So the issue begins with a battle between Batgirl and Scarecrow. of course he sprayed her with fear gas so she is totally seeing shit. She sees Robin (Tim Drake) telling her she wasn't good enough, she sees Spoiler her own former identity telling her she deserves to fail and finally she sees everyone her insecure little mind feels she has let down. She triumphs though and declares "I am Batgirl!" as she delivers the final blow to Scarecrow.

 

Apparently this was convincing enough to Orcale that Stephanie Brown deserves to be Batgirl. Together they take an oath in the Batcave in the exact same place that Dick and Bruce took an oath together when Dick was like 8 or something. Only this time Barbara is swearing to Stephanie that she will always have her at her side as Orcale in battle. She awards Stephanie a new Batgirl costume.

 

The issue ends with Batgirl in new uniform taking out some thugs.

 

Red Robin# 5

Written by Chris Yost and Penciled by Ramon Bachs

 



 

Honestly, this issue was kinda lame. Not much happens.

 

Last issue Tim and his companion Pru were severely injured by a dude named The Widower and other thugs. Tim wakes up in a stronghold of the League of Assassins. They have repaired his wounds. A man calling himself The White Ghost introduces himself and tells Tim that he was attacked by representatives of The Council of Spiders.

 

White Ghost brings Tam Fox into the room. Tam is Lucius Fox's daughter. She apparently came to Iraq looking for Tim. Tam got kidnapped by the League and brought to their stronghold. The White Ghost details to everyone that will listen that there is a war going on between the League of Assassins and The Council of Spiders. The Council has been killing a lot of the dudes from the League. They ask for Tim's help. He agrees.

 

At the end of the issue Tim reveals to Tam he plans to take both the League and the Council down.

 

Tune in next week. Same Bat-time, same Bat-Channel.
Mattman

The Bitter Star Wars Nerd Review Of Clone Wars

 

Episode 03: Children Of The Force

 

This week's episode picks up exactly where last week's story ended.  Anakin and Ahsoka have returned to their big ship after believing that Cade Bane has been killed and the Holocron they were after has been destroyed.  In just a matter of seconds though, they realize that one of the clone troopers that has disembarked from their ship isn't who he says he is.  In what is a suprise to only the extremely dim witted, Cad Bane turns out to be alive.  If it wasn't obvious before, he must have killed that clone trooper we saw "shooting him" last week, switched their clothes and hidden aboard Anakin's ship as just another clone. 

 

With his cover blown, Bane takes Ahsoka down with a stiff knee to the gut, steals a ship and flies out of the hanger before Anakin can stop him.  Anakin makes a quick call up to the bridge and tells the admiral to shut down all of the garbage smashers on the detention area.  Wait, no, that's wrong.  Sorry.  He does tell him to shut down all of the hyperdrive rings though so Bane can't steal one and jump to lightspeed.  The admiral spins around and yells down to his command crew, "No, shut them all down.  Hurry!", but unlike in the original Star Wars film, there's no R2-D2 here on the bridge to carry out this order fast enough and bane is able to attach to a ring and jump away before they can all be shut down.

 

The chase . . . once again . . . is on.

 

Once he's safe, Bane contacts Darth Sidious and gets further instructions from him.  Oh, and he also gets his hat back.  Fashion, afterall, is very important to the hired mercenaries of the Star Wars universe.  It turns out I was wrong too.  As opposed to my original belief last week that the data from the holocron about all of the force-sensitive children in the galaxy only being used by Sidious after the fall of the Jedi order, it turns out he wants to use the data right away.  Sidious orders Bane to pick four names off of the list at random, kidnap them and then bring them to Mustafar.

 

Mustafar?  Really?  The Planet where Anakin will get the crap kicked out of him by Obi-wan at the end of Episode 3?  Ok, I guess that makes sense as that's obviously where Sidious has had a secret base hidden for quite some time.  I'm ok with the kids going there.  But why does he want them in the first place?

 

Meanwhile, back at the Jedi Temple, our heroes realize that they're royally hosed.  They don't have Bane or the holocron, they have no idea where he may have gone, and now they're seriously worried about what will happen to all of the kids on that list.  I guess Bane must have taken the only copy of the list too, because they don't seem to have the kids' information on hand at the temple.  So it is that in typical Jedi fashion, when realizing that they're a good ways up bantha poodoo creek without a paddle, they do the only thing they can do at this point.  They sit down and meditate on the force and hope to god for a clue.

 

 

Obi-wan, Anakin, Mace and Yoda all sit down and meditate and in a few minutes time they start getting visions of the future that tells them where Bane is going.  Funny how those visions of the future never warn them of Anakin's turn to the darkside or the fall of the Jedi Temple, isn't it?  Anyways, they successfully deduce who the four children are that Bane is going after.  One of them is already gone, so Obi-wan is sent to Rodia to save a child there while Anakin and Ahsoka are sent to Naboo to save a Gungan child there.

 

Gungans.  Why is it always fucking Gungans?

 

On Rodia, we see Cad Bane pretending to be an agent of the Jedi as he tries to convince the mother to hand over her baby.  She refuses, so he uses his super swanky decoder ring with swirly lights on it to hypnotize her.  He grabs the kid just as Obi-wan shows up, who chases him up to the landing platform.  Obi-wan is too slow once again though and must watch in frustration as Bane flies away.  He even shakes his fist at him.  It's sort of funny.  I was half expecting him to yell out something like, "Curses!" as Bane flew off, but sadly such amusement was not to be had.

 

Onto Naboo, where Anakin and Ahsoka pull into the exact same hanger from Episode One (does Naboo really only have the one hanger bay?) and meet up with some of the local officials who have been warned of Bane and his intentions.  The baby is safe, and they're waiting for him to show up.  Ahsoka asks Anakin if it's ok if she leads the search for Bane as she "has a score to settle with him".  I'd definitely say she's got a score to settle with him.  At this point he's kicked her ass at least twice, tried to eject her out of an airlock and even tortured her just for the hell of it.  She sounds positively angry as she mentions this score she has to settle.  She'd best be careful there, vengence leads to the darkside and she's walking a fine line lately.  Anakin tells her to go ahead as he has some other stuff to do first (i.e. Padme). 

 

A little while later, Bane shows up and suprises me with a sudden burst of stupidity as he walks into what is so completely obviously a trap.  The Kid's not there, but Anakin and Ahsoka are, and for once they actually get the better of Bane and he's actually captured by them.  Wow, that only took the entire Jedi order about 4 episodes to accomplish.  Seriously, what took so long?

 

Bane is brought back to the Jedi Temple where he is questioned, but he doesn't talk.  Impatient as always, Anakin suggests they try to use the force to manipulate his mind.  Mace Windu says that Bane is too strong for that, so Anakin suggests that a bunch of Jedi all work together on it to overpower his brain.  Mace warns that such an action could destroy Bane's mind, to which Anakin basically says, "Yeah, so?" and Mace rather suprisingly agrees to try it.  This scene is a little unsettling as it pretty much breaks down to something equivalent of a group mind fuck on Bane.  Sure, it's not as dark as when Bane tortured that Jedi Master to deat in the last episode, but these are the good guys doing the evil deed here.  The Jedi are very obviously torturing him here, and Anakin, Ahsoka and Mace all look like dark Jedi while this is going on.  So much for high minded ideals and never doing harm.

 

 

As a credit to Bane's mental strength, he manages to successfully fend off the first wave of the group mind probe, but it was pretty painful and he agrees to take them to the holocron and the kids if they promise not to try that again.  The Jedi agree and Bane is then led out to a ship.  On the way, Anakin and Obi-wan argue as to whether Chancellor Palpatine should be notified of their recent progress.  Obi-wan says hell no, this is Jedi business and the Chancellor has no part in it.  Anakin retorts that since they are the appointed leaders of the Republic army, they should inform the Republic's leader what they're up to.  Obi-wan Agrees but tells Anakin that he and Ahsoka hav to be the ones to talk to Palpatine while Obi-wan himself and Mace Windu follow where Bane tells them to go.  Anakin's annoyed by this, but can't get out of it so he and his Padawan head to Corscuant.

 

Bane leads Mace and Obi-wan to a remote space station tucked way out in the outter rim where he of course walks them straight into a trap.  The moment Mace Steps foot on the station, security guns pop out of everywhere and start firing at the two Jedi.  In the following scuffle, Bane once again escapes the Jedi's custody, makes it to a ship and blasts off from the station.  As he's flying away he triggers a self destruct device on the station and Obi-wan and Mace just barely make it back to their own ship and take off before the station is blown to bits.  On the plus side though, Mace was able to snag the holocron from the station before it got blown to hell, so even though Cad Bane is still free, at least they got the data back.

 

Back on Corscuant, Anakin meets with Palpatine who very politely tells Ahsoka to get lost while the grown ups talk.  They don't really talk about anything important, and soon enough Anakin and Ashoka are back together trying to figure out where Bane could have taken the kids.  They have access to Bane's ship from when they had captured him, and although Bane had wiped the ships astronavigation charts, he hadn't erased his fuel history which appearently keeps track of every planet you've ever been to.  Through this they figure out that Bane must have stopped at Mustafar and head there to find the kids.

 

On Mustafar, we see a hologram of Darth Sidious talking to some medical droids who are prepping the stolen babies for some sort of procedure.  We learn that Sidious' plan all along has been to kidnap a bunch of force-sensitive children and turn them into spies in the service of the dark side of the force.  He wants a whole army of dark soldier/spies at his command.  Not a bad goal for a super villain really.  I'm ok with that.

 

 

What I'm not ok with though is Anakin and Ahsoka showing up on Mustafar.  When they get there, Sidious orders that his base be evacuated and then destroyed.  The two Jedi move quicky though and are able to save the kids before the droids can make a getaway, and before the station breaks apart and falls into the lava (just barely).  The kids are safe, but I'm left wondering, "WTF?"  So Anakin's been to Mustafar before when he arrives there in Episode 3?  The Jedi know that there was a n evil base built on the planet, but they never think to check back there again?  Sidious decides to build another base there after he destroys this one, even though he knows full well that his little hidden planet has been made fully known to the Jedi?  That makes no sense at all.

 

If Sidious had gotten away with his plans, I would have understood the kids going to Mustafar, but if you're going to have Jedi show up and destroy the base and save the kids, why the hell would you do that on a planet that is supposed to be secretive and is so important to the story later?  At the end of the episode I'm left feeling annoyed that they just tried to reuse a known location to make the series feel like it fits in with the movies, but all they really did was distract from the story and sort of mess up the logic of the films entirely.  Why would the Emperor rebuild a secret base on a planet that has already had one base there lost to the Jedi?  That's just stupid.

 

Ugh.  Other than that, the episode was pretty solid.  It wasn't as epic as the last episodes, but it was fun and enjoyable and it only made me want to bang my head against the wall during the last five minutes.  Oh, and there was one really annoying scene where we had to see what a baby Gungan looks like.  As it turns out, baby Gungan's are even more annoying than adult ones.  Like 100 times more annoying too. 

 

Final Grade:  B-