strange and random happenstance

By Earth by T. Thorn Coyle
Published by: Pf Publishing
Publication Date: April 27th, 2018
Format: Kindle, 242 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Legend has it that ghosts can't follow you over water. Between Tennessee and Portland there is a great big river bisecting the country. But legend fails to mention that there are ghosts everywhere. That is why Cassiel buried that part of her deep. Shoved her ability to see ghosts in a box and pushed it to the very back of the closet and kept it there through sheer willpower and rage. That wasn't who she was anymore. She wasn't the broken girl whose parents forced her to work with police. Now she has a new life, a coven, the Arrow and Crescent, whose patron Goddess is Diana, friends, and a job at a local cafe owned by the head of her coven, Raquel. Life is good, it's normal. Sure her landlord is about to make her homeless by increasing the rent, but at least she's in some control of her life. That is until the coven performs their Solstice eve ceremony and a ghost reaches out to Cassie. She's in denial that that is what she saw. That box is buried deep. History CAN NOT be repeating itself. And then into the cafe walks Joe. He's Raquel's next door neighbor. He's hot and he's haunted. His girlfriend Tarkia was a star reporter for the Mount Tabor Monthly who one night ended it all with a bottle of pills chased with some bourbon. An act totally against her nature. Her brother, Darius, has blamed Joe ever since. She's now been gone longer than Joe and her were together and yet he can't get over her. And his life is about to be hit with a dose of the uncanny. He suffers a severe injury at work due to a phone call that didn't register on his call log. When he approaches Cassie for help she freaks and he stumbles into Darius. Darius is not doing well. His apartment looks like the nest of a conspiracy theorist. But, loath as he is to admit it, Darius has a point. Whenever Cassie was working on something big she shut everyone out. Add to that she wasn't the type of person to kill herself and Darius has come to the conclusion she was murdered by whomever she was investigating. A suspicion Joe has had deep down for a long time. But Darius and Joe can't do this alone. Cassie is obviously involved because Tarika has reached out to her. And Cassie knows that three against unseen forces isn't nearly as good as a whole coven full of witches against the unknown. The Arrow and Crescent Coven is going to get justice for Tarkia, and maybe in the process start to help Portland to heal from the corruption at the very top. Sure, their approach might be unique, but after all, the goal is to keep Portland weird!

This book is like a warm embrace when you need it the most. A welcoming community with a conscience. It had the vibe of Charmed with a huge helping of social justice. It took me back to my college days where I moved through a cozy community of homes and restaurants and cafes talking about how the world could be changed while marveling that all my friends had the same moon and stars throw blanket. There is a very specific demographic for this book and I am it. Don't we all just want a safe haven? Don't we all just want there to be something we can do to help make the world a better place? Everyone deserves the right to live. That includes food and shelter. It also doesn't hurt that this takes place in Portland which has been on the news so much for how they are standing up to the government. Long live the frogs! Keep Portland weird! Go chicken man go! The issues I had with By Earth are that cozy vibes and good intentions can only take you so far. The plot matters. And as the book nears its conclusion it started to feel rushed and slightly incomprehensible. Like we were going to get some sort of ending but not everything wrapped up because there are eight more books focusing on different coven members that follow. And, well, even though this is from 2018, things have changed so much that I don't think a politician losing their shit on television is enough to get them ousted from power anymore. Their plan was to take those out at the top and it relied on consequences actually existing. And well, as we've seen more and more, there are no consequences anymore. And their are no editors anymore because dear me, the timeline errors and typos are rife. Because there is NO WAY the timeline of this book works. So, this story starts on the eve of winter solstice and primarily concludes on Christmas Eve. There's a denouement a few days later, but that's not important. Day one, we have our "meet cute" between Cassie and Joe when he comes to repair the pipes at the cafe. Day two, Joe has his accident. Which means they have their first "date" on the third day and Joe runs into Darius and agrees to meet him at his apartment the next day. Day four into day five, after being with Darius Joe stays up all night connecting the dots that Darius previously had and has some takeout with Cassie which leads to a full coven meeting. Day six Cassie and Darius meet and there's an arson attempt and everything concludes on day seven. That's, minimally, seven days it takes for the events of this story to happen. I'm sure I'm missing some and Joe's injury hopefully meant he rested a day or two in bed. But minimally seven days. So, the earliest the winter solstice can be is December 20th. That means our story starts properly on the 20th and concludes on the 24th. Five days. Are there two Mondays or Tuesdays!?! Because there actually are two Thursdays... This is just annoying lack of foresight that drove me batty. If I hadn't gone down the days of the week conspiracy like Darius with Tarkia's murder this would have been such an enjoyable read. As is, I enjoyed it, but with caveats because I could not in good conscience ignore the blatant time discrepancies.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: An Urban Development, By Earth, Charmed, Christmas Eve, Editor, Gentrification, Ghosts, Investigative Journalism, Politicians, Portland, Social Justice, T. Thorn Coyle, The Witches of Portland, Timeline, Winter Solstice, Witches

Of all the shows my friends and I have watched on our Thursday Night Teleparties since the pandemic started The Umbrella Academy is easily my favorite. Each week I'd patiently wait for the next episode, and let me tell you, there's something about spending that prolonged time with them that makes the show hit so differently than if you binge it. They became my family, a wonderfully fucked up family of ex-childhood superheroes and their continued efforts to thwart the apocalypse that just seems to follow them wherever and whenever they go. The dark humor, the dancing, I was in love with all of it. Until the end. And let's acknowledge upfront, there was no way that the seven Hargreeves siblings and Lila were going to get a happy ending. This isn't the world that they live in. Time and time again they clawed their way to some sort of happiness only to have it brutally taken away. Their deaths were a given. I mean for most of the show one of them actually was dead. So I'm not arguing that ending, I'm arguing how they got there. And I probably should have said spoiler alert, they all die... Now I'm in no way blaming the actors and their spectacular work, it's the writers who let them down. In fact, the ending of season three, with the universe being rebooted would have been a preferable ending to this, whatever this was. Because it seemed like the writers weren't serving the characters, they were serving themselves. They had all these little ideas they'd been kicking around for years and decided to shoehorn them into the overall arc at the expense of the greater story. Why else would we have Klaus wasted on a storyline where he gets pimped out and has a ghost possess him to have sex with his ex? A job he does just to get the drugs. Oh, and he's also buried alive and rescued by a ghost dog, but again, how does this serve the overall story? It doesn't. Nor does Luther being a stripper or Diego working at the CIA or finally having Lila and Five be together. This season started strong because the family was together. But as soon as they separated them they started chipping away at what makes this show work. Their bickering and their badass skills are what brings them together. Also, they weren't paying attention to their own rules. Marigold, AKA what made them them, was a name Harlan gave to his powers. IT WAS NOT THE UNIVERSAL TERM! It was Harlan's term! But then again, they end with a big old plothole; a grandfather paradox. If the Hargreeves don't exist how do their children? It breaks the rules! I just wanted Five to pop in after the credits and be like, actually... This isn't how it happened. At this point you're thinking, damn, she hated this season, why did she rate it in her top ten adaptations of the year? Because I love me my Hargreeves. That's why. This might have ended on a whimper instead of a bang, though the end did kind of start with a bang, Ben and Jennifer sex joke! But it's still one of the best shows out there. It was clever, it was unique, and I want more. I'd be willing to totally forget this season ever happened in fact... But this season did give us something. Closure on why Luther was on the moon and Ben's death. We actually learned how Ben died, and it was way more brutal than you could ever have imagined. And then he died again with the worst CGI I've ever seen that is some horrific tribute to Junji Ito and Kaju. Though I'll let that go. I'll let it all go. So what if I had no emotional connection to this Ben. I at least got to see Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman get down to Cher. Something I imagine is a typical Saturday night for them.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: And the Emmy Goes To, Apocalypse, Ben Hargreeves, Cher, Dancing, Diego Hargreeves, Five, Grandfather Paradox, Klaus Hargreeves, Lila, Luther Hargreeves, Megan Mullally, Nick Offerman, The Umbrella Academy, Timeline

Timeline
Based on the book by Michael Crichton
Starring: Paul Walker, Frances O'Connor, Gerard Butler, Anna Friel, Billy Connolly, David Thewlis, Neal McDonough, Matt Craven, Ethan Embry, Michael Sheen, Lambert Wilsone, Marton Csokasr, Rossif Sutherland, Patrick Sabongui, and Steve Kahan
Release Date: November 26th, 2003
Rating: ★
To Buy

Professor Edward Johnston is teaching at Castlegard in France while excavating the site. The tech company ITC is funding the excavation and this has Johnston wary. ITC keeps suggesting places to dig and they are a little too spot on. Suspicious of their involvement and accuracy he decides to head to New Mexico and confront Robert Doniger, ITC's president, leaving the site in the capable hands of his assistants, André Marek, Kate Ericson, and Josh Stern. A few days after the professor's departure there is a cave in at the monastery site which leads to the discovering of a note from the Professor saying that he is in 1357 and needs help. The carbon dating proves the legitimacy of the note and Johnston's son Chris calls ITC and confronts them about the disappearance of his father. They promise a full explanation if they come to their headquarters in New Mexico.

Arriving in New Mexico the team is told that ITC's interest in their work and in Castlegard is because while trying to figure out how to transport three dimensional objects ITC discovered a wormhole to Castlegard in 1357. The Professor went back to 1357 and is now trapped there. ITC plans to send his team to bring him back because they are the most knowledgeable about the time and place and have a higher chance of success then they do. Of course ITC doesn't bother to warn them of the dangers of the time period they are entering or even the dangers of the technology used to get there. ITC has one goal, protect their ass and assets. If that means stranding people in 1357, so be it. But the Professor and his rag tag crew have more heart and determination then ITC gives them credit for and they're not going down without a fight.

Despite my continual disappointment with Michael Crichton adaptations I was willing to give the Timeline movie a shot. I mean, I didn't really like the book to begin with so how could they make it worse? Oh how naive I was. I should have realized that a mediocre book made into a movie with one of my most hated actresses ever, hello Frances O'Connor, would be nothing but a failed attempt at a blockbuster. Riddled with cliches, hello new character François, you shall be playing our Redshirt today, the movie actually dumbs down a fairly dumbed down book. The plot was streamlined, the women were sidelined, if it wasn't for the the pure visual appeal of trebuchets in action there is nothing worth remembering in this movie. The only joy I got out of re-watching Timeline all these years later was realizing that the despot Lord Oliver was played by a then unknown Michael Sheen, who obviously got that he was in the movie equivalent of Medieval Times and camped it up accordingly.

What shocked me most about this adaptation was the dumbing down, the softening of everything across the board, from plot to characters to hearts to women. Taking each aspect in turn, the plot was striped bare of anything redeemable. Instead of having ITC actually creating this interesting technology, it's just something they stumbled upon. There's a wormhole, we don't know how we found it, we don't know why it works, we don't know what we'll use it for, we don't know if there's a purpose to it, and we won't give you an answer after two hours, just go with it OK? So you have taken the sole interesting aspect of the book, technology that as time goes on looks actually plausible with the research being done at CERN and made it a MacGuffin. Thanks a lot. That's sarcasm. I'm sure the people behind this movie surely aren't able to grasp this, hence me spelling it out. Wormholes creating love stories and two hour battles and chances since 2003!

If dumbing down the plot wasn't enough, all the characters were made into idiots! They are literally stupider, as if their minds have been softened into jelly. Firstly, Paul Walker as Chris isn't even an archaeologist, just Professor Johnston's drifter son trying to get into Kate's pants. As for Kate, she's just a general archaeologist, who doesn't have an eidetic memory for architecture and a passion for climbing. Marek isn't the Medieval scholar who has mastered all past languages, that's what we now need Redshirt François for, instead André can wield a sword and shoot an arrow and rescue fair maidens. And the newly renamed Josh as played by Ethan Embry? He's just there for his frosted tips, his 90s goatee, and to try to get his friends home gosh darnit! Plus, by having Doniger stumble on the wormhole our one guaranteed smart person has been replaced by a bumbling David Thewlis, the go-to bumbler.

As their minds all melted into no existence apparently their hearts took on new properties, much like a certain character from Seuss, "Well, in Whoville they say – that the Grinch’s small heart grew three sizes that day." Because the characters don't have the mental capacity anymore to understand the harsh realities of France during the Hundred Years' War, well obviously they're going to cry at every freaking death. In the book they personally lay waste to a lot of French and English troops, because it was a fact of life, a fact that scholars would understand, especially Marek. Instead all the characters are weepy. Understandably they'd get upset over the loss of their friends, but to go into full convulsive shock on killing someone? If it's you or them, I think survival instinct should be kicking in, not the instinct to cry. They seriously have red rimmed eyes for the whole movie! And then they even soften the heart of De Kere. Instead of being a complete and total psychopath who loves to kill, here he's totally not evil or a danger at all really, he'll even kindly tell you his tale of being misused by ITC instead of killing everything in sight like an enraged kitten.

But nothing pissed me off more then the softening of the women. I know a lot people go on and on about how books and movies don't give us strong female role models, and while I'm aware of this fact, well, I've never been that bothered by it. If it doesn't have something for me, obviously I won't read or watch it so it's not like I'm supporting this trope. Re-watching Timeline so close upon re-reading the book I was struck by how they had stripped out the female empowerment and made it almost painful to watch if you are in any way a feminist. The objectification was extreme, they were literally objects for the manly men to protect! Firstly two of the strong female roles, that of Gomez and Kramer, well, they became guys! While I had my issues with Kate in the book, she at least wasn't a helpless woman and a weepy mess. But the true kicker is Claire. Lady Claire isn't a pawn in the book, someone for Marek to rescue, she would be insulted. In fact Marek loves her in the book because she is playing every single angle, she's scheming, manipulative, and always looking out for herself! She's not a banner flown from the highest tower as a rallying point! She's looking out for herself any way she can!

Though this softening of females and hearts is a two edged sword because the result of this mushiness is that instead of being pragmatic the film is able to add a little romantic love, a little chivalry. But chivalry as we see and as was depicted by the Pre-Raphaelites, not chivalry as it existed then, which was about honor and protection, not giving your life for true love. And this romanticism of the past leads to the only redeeming feature of the entire movie, and that is Gerard Butler. He brings so much passion to the role of Marek that the romance of living and dying in another time for true love just makes the tear ducts a little moist. Earlier in the movie when he is describing the unique love depicted in a sarcophagus they found on the site and later when he realizes it's himself, you see the one true thing in this film, the everlasting quality of true love. It might not have been what Crichton wanted, but it raised the film out of the trope-tastic mire it had bogged itself down in for a minute and made me watch a few too many Gerard Butler films... hint, avoid Shooters, even with Ioan Gruffudd it's unbearably bad, and check out Dracula 2000 instead.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: CERN, Chivalry, Dr. Suess, Dracula 2000, France, Frances O'Connor, Gerard Butler, Grinch, Ioan Gruffudd, Medieval, Michael Crichton, Michael Sheen, Objectification, Pre-Raphaelite, Shooters, Timeline, Wormholes

Timeline by Michael Crichton
Published by: Alfred A. Knopf
Publication Date: November 16th, 1999
Format: Hardcover, 444 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Robert Doniger and his company ITC make components for MRI machines. Or at least that's what everyone thinks. ITC though has a vast portfolio of different investments, one of them is an archaeological site in the south of France on the Dordogne River. The site is lead by Professor Edward Johnston and his team; André Marek, a man who wishes he lived in the period he studies, Chris Hughes, who is like a son to Johnston and specializes in studying mills, Kate Erickson, an architect student who has transferred to the study of history, and David Stern, their resident geek. The site is thrown into uproar when a representative from ITC comes to do the yearly inspection of the site and makes references to things that the researchers themselves don't even know about. Johnston demands an audience with Doniger and returns with the representative to New Mexico.

Days go by and Professor Johnston isn't in communication with his team when in the ruins of the monastery they find a note from him saying that he is in 1357 and needs help. Everyone thinks it's a joke until all the tests prove that it is legit. Marek contacts ITC to question them about this development and he is told to pack his bags and pick three other team members, they are to be on a plane to New Mexico in the next hour. With Chris, Kate, and David all onboard, they are let into the big secret that ITC has been carefully guarding. ITC has developed time travel, of a sort. Really it's traveling to different times in parallel dimensions, but that is how they knew so much about the site in southern France, they'd been there when the castles weren't ruins; and due to a little accident, Professor Johnston is there now and has no way back. ITC thought it prudent to send back the only people who know the site and know what the Professor would be doing, aka his team. ITC convinces them to go on this rescue mission, but they cleverly omit the dangers and risks that the team will face and the fact that not everyone might come back alive or at all.

By 1999 I was a true Michael Crichton junky. I had powered through his whole back catalog and aside from a few blips here and there I adored every single volume. Sadly, having read all his books I could do nothing but re-read my favorites while waiting for the next book to come out. And when Timeline came out in November of 1999 I didn't see it for what it was; the beginning of the end. While two of his future books would come to be my most hated of all Crichton's books, Timeline was the one that started the slide in quality. By all accounts I should have loved this book. It's time travel, it's knights, it's amazing new technology, it's a snooze. I remember struggling through this book. Over a month after I had bought it as I unwrapped my Christmas presents I asked my parents to be excused from going to the relatives for our traditional holiday festivities. I was damned if I would waste more time on this book so I resolved to power through it all Christmas day so that at the end of it I could revel in my new books and move on. I curled up on my couch and before my parents even got home I had finally finished Timeline. And in 2004 before the movie came out I struggled through it again. And now, despite my history with this book, I braved it's pages once more and can say that yes, it doesn't improve. Even a decade didn't improve it one little bit, aside from reaffirming my desire to never be transported via beams or lasers. In fact, I think I found Timeline even more annoying this time around.

The overall problem with this book is that it hinges on a faulty premise. There is NO REASON for the grad students to rescue their professor. What's in it for them? Up until his disappearance into the past he's had a total of about two lines and we're supposed to believe that these four students are willing to sacrifice their lives for him? Why? Is he really that awesome? Chris, who views him as a father figure might have some reason, and he's the most hesitant! But other then that there is NO REASON. Stern made the right choice. Stay behind, survive. But the lack of character development isn't just in Professor Johnston, though he is the most obvious. None of the characters are developed in any tangible way. They are astonishingly ignorant and two dimensional, so much so that I have no idea how they even got into grad school. Here's the evil English warlord, here's the female grad student who can be independent, but when a man rescues her she'll swoon and think about marriage and happily ever afters. There is no depth, no development, no reason to root for these characters and hope they make it back to their own time.

The two dimensionality extends into the worldbuilding, as in, here's a cookie cutter Medieval World, go play in it. For all the trash talk of Disney and immersive experiences, I gotta say, I think Disney would do a better job then Doniger and ITC. Disney would at least have a PROPER MAP! I mean, I thought that I had misremembered and that my compass disorientation was because I wasn't paying attention to the included map, but I was wrong! It's the book, not me! At one point the Green Chapel is in the woods to the east about two miles, later it's only a quarter mile to the north? Geographic orientation be damned! Plus how are they getting so easily across the river when there aren't that many boats? Plus all the knights and lords are so basic you can't tell one apart from the other. Plus which castle is which? Their names are bandied about and switched so much that not only is this novel really really flat, but also confusing as hell. It's just adding problems one on top of the other for readers, plus, plus, plus. Plus for the first hundred or so pages, it just made my head hurt.

Re-reading this book after so long I realized it's like a really bad episode of Doctor Who without The Doctor; but not cool like "Blink" but lame like "Love and Monsters." Oh, and give him the worst companions ever, lets say Mickey, Adric, and Peri. So, it's Mickey, Adric, and Peri wandering around and killing people left and right and getting no closer to saving The Doctor because their combined stupidity is so staggering you are blown away. But even if The Doctor wasn't present look at the name of the show, Doctor Who! He is the driving force, much like Professor Johnston should be but isn't. Yes, this book came out in 1999, but the thing is time travel and science fiction already had set expectations for a narrative that had nothing to do with re-launching Doctor Who. The readers of this genre are smart and savvy. We expect the best out of a book we're expending our time on. The thing that struck me most is that this is really time travel for dummies. It's like The Da Vinci Code, written with the masses in mind, not bothering with those readers who might actually have an intellect.

Which brings me to the fact that I am capable of independent thought and therefore I will now poke holes in Crichton's theory of time travel. Can we really call it time travel? He even says it's more like space travel, because you are not going back along your own timeline, but you're crossing over into a parallel dimension that is almost but not quite the same. Which means we get into a paradox of parallel universes. How do they know that they can effect their timeline? If they aren't in their universe how can they A) be sure it's historically accurate and B) get the note from the professor. To tackle A, let's look at the mill. Chris is surprised to see the mill has four not three wheels as he thought. What if the difference between our universe and the one they go to is just that there's one more water wheel? Chris, hard as it may be to believe, might be right. As for B, how exactly did the professor know they were going to find his note for help? He's in another freakin' universe! The fact is small differences in dimensions would really add up which in turn makes the book not add up. Yes, I am probably over thinking this, but I just want it to be better, to be so much more, not Medieval Dan Brown! But I think I have proven beyond a doubt that re-reading Timeline can't magically change what's written.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Archeology, Castles, Christmas, Crichton Celebration, Dan Brown, Disney, Doctor Who, France, Knights, Medieval, Michael Crichton, Paradox, The Da Vinci Code, The Doctor, Time Travel, Timeline, Worldbuilding