Hiatus

I hate to do this but between extra hours at work and getting ready for the holidays, there is no way I can keep up with any kind of schedule. I know I've been posting a crappy amount this year but next year should be better. I did make my goal of 52 books read this year already though so as soon as I can find 5 minutes to myself, I'll be scribbling and editing reviews. I hate working retail for the holidays.

Back on New Years, Sorry for the wait.

Fanfiction Crossovers

    I may have mentioned before that I read a lot. Sometimes “real” books don’t satisfy me or I want something completely off the wall or my book has been left at home for some reason. During these times I like to read fanfiction. Now I know what you are thinking, “fanfiction? How dumb can you get?” And yes, there is a lot of bad and weird fanfiction. There is also a lot of good fanfiction. I’m going to point out my favorites just because I can. I tend not to read works in progress since I hate investing a bunch of time into something that may be abandoned mid-story. The only exceptions I make to this are writers who have written the story and are just posting chapters til it ends.

     The first thing to know before searching for fanfiction is some of the abbreviations that people use to label their stories. This website has most of the basic ones: http://mokisfanfictionblog.com/blog/mokis-fanfiction-glossary/. This way if there is something you don’t want to read, you are forewarned and can skip anything you might find offensive. I try to keep to stories based on things I already like: Firefly, Buffy, Harry Potter, various other movies and TV shows. I read a lot of crossovers which are stories involving two or more categories.


My five favorite crossovers (in no particular order):

1. Various – Tales from the Barman

http://www.tthfanfic.org/Story-11757/Methos+Tales+from+the+Barman.htm

     This story is huge. It was originally started by a person going by the name of Methos on a site named Twisting the Hellmouth, a fanfiction site for Buffy fans. The main idea of the story was Xander got tired of fighting the good fight and opened a bar. Xander having his typical luck, opened said bar on a dimensional crossroads. He trades a drink, sometimes a meal or a place to set up for the night, for good stories and a small token from the patrons. There are so many good stories (and universes) included in this that it’s impossible to talk about them all. The whole community decided to kick in and add their own chapters to this story. After six months and 269 chapters, the story winds down. A couple years later, the tales were resurrected and another 101 chapters have been added to the epic. Some stories are funny, some are cute, and some are touching. There is a little something for everyone in this massive fanfiction.

2. GhostWriter84 – Rule Eight

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9408955/1/Rule-Eight

     Sadly this fanfic was never finished. It is a crossover between Zombieland and the Walking Dead. It takes place after the Zombieland movie and around Season 3 of the Walking Dead. The Zombieland crew has worked themselves across the country and run across Rick’s group. They are taken in by the group. The story follows what happens through part of season 3 with Florida, Columbus, and the girls’ special brand of insanity added. Unfortunately, the story ends after 9 chapters and hasn’t been updated since March of 2014. It’s a shame because the story was well written and the characters were true to their official counterparts.

3. Jedi Buttercup – Things That Never Happened to Buffy Summers

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/1977157/1/Things-That-Never-Happened-to-Buffy-Summers

     This is a collection of short (less than a paragraph usually) stories about things that never happened to Buffy aka the Slayer. It’s mostly her running into characters played by former actors from Buffy the Vampire or the spinoff Angel. This one is a neat little collection, a palette cleanser type of story. There’s no big reveals, just a few what ifs to entertain you for a few minutes.

4. Nonjon – Browncoat, Green Eyes

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/2857962/1/Browncoat-Green-Eyes

     This is a cross over between Firefly and Harry Potter. It sounds like it wouldn’t be a good idea but surprisingly it works. Shortly after his wife’s death, a depressed Harry Potter puts himself into stasis until the next big bad shows up that he can help defeat. Fast forward 500 years to the Firefly ‘verse. After the Miranda wave, the Alliance hears of this “wizard hero” and wakes him up to take care of their River Tam problem. What follows is an entertaining look at the world of Firefly and the chaos Harry Potter brings to the future as he tries to figure out what happened to all the wizards and how Earth was made uninhabitable.

5. Livi2Jack -- Window Of Opportunity Bonanza

https://www.fanfiction.net/Stargate-SG-1-and-Bonanza-Crossovers/68/414/

     During a mission gone wrong, the Stargate is hit by blast of energy from a Jaffa ship as the team is trying to evacuate. The overload shuts down the gate and the last scientist to go through is catapulted back to the Old West, where it turns out the Ponderosa ranch and Virginia City exists. The SG-1 team receives packets of letters written by the scientist and held in trust by Wells-Fargo. The story goes back and forth between surviving the Old West and trying to get the scientist back to the present. It’s a great example of how a writer can put an original character into a fanfiction without going over the top about it. Too many writers go over the top with original characters, like adding the character to the main group or writing themselves into the story without making it believable. For the unexpected mix of Old West and Stargate technology, the story is entertaining and keeps my attention the whole way through.

Circle

And now for something completely different. An actual movie review.

     The movie opens in a dark room with a bunch of lit up, red circles around a center console. People appear standing on the circles. Every few minutes, the console sends out electricity of some sort and kills one of the people. After a few minutes of panic, the people figure out the rules of this game they are forced to play. The person with the most votes will die every few minutes (the time gets longer as fewer people remain) until only one remains. What happens after that is anyone’s guess.

     What a weird movie. The whole movie is a big debate over who is the worthiest person to survive until the ending. There is small twist at the ending but it’s nothing earthshattering. There is no real beginning or ending. It is one big middle. There is minimal explanation of how they ended up in the circles or what happens after the final person is left and no real character development. The only actress I recognized was Julie Benz. Despite this, I have been arguing with people since I’ve seen it over whether this is a good movie or not. The choices of the characters make you think but there’s not a lot detail about why this happened. It’s an hour and a half long but was paced well. It didn’t feel like I’d been waiting to finding out the ending that long. One person’s opinion is that some writers had a good idea but didn’t really know how to flesh out an ending. I find myself agreeing with this opinion the more I think about it. If you are curious or like character driven stories, it’s on Netflix and worth the time to watch it. I’d love to hear some other opinions on this one. 

The Black Company -- Glen Cook

" We are minions of the villain of the piece. There are no self-proclaimed villains, only regiments of self-proclaimed saints. Victorious historians rule where good or evil lies. We abjure labels. We fight for money and an indefinable pride. The politics, the ethics, the moralities, are irrelevant.”

     The Black Company is a mercenary troop working for the city of Beryl. When the city riots and their employer plans to betray them, the Company defects. They escape with the help of a recruiter for the army of the Lady. The Lady is the leader of the largest army ever seen in recent times and happens to be one of the ancient evil sorcerers locked away centuries ago. She and ten of her followers were released when a curious wizard freed them accidentally. The Lady left her husband imprisoned and began her own bid for world dominion. The Lady’s campaign is failing on most fronts with only the Black Company led forces having any kind of victory. The story is told through the eyes of Croaker the Company’s physician and chronicler. He catches the fancy of the Lady through an ill-advised crush early on and his penchant for writing only the truth in the Annals of the Company. Over the 2 years of the campaign that the book covers, Croaker and the Company take out the leaders of the Rebel faction but it’s not enough. The Lady’s stronghold is surrounded by the Rebel, her own cadre of sorcerers is warring among themselves, and the strength of the Black Company is the only thing holding the army together.  Will the Lady stop her enemies in time? Will the Company survive this predicament? You’ll just have to read it to find out.

     This is the first book of a fairly long series. The writing may seem disjointed until the realization that you are reading the actual Annals of the Company as they are being written. A lot of reviews have issues with this and the fact everyone has descriptive names. There are reasons for both these things and are explained as the story goes on. This is a book that needs the reader’s full attention or details will be missed. It is almost impossible to get a full impression of this book on a first reading. So much is happening between the war, special missions, and things that are learned near the end of the book, that it’s hard to keep everything straight. I’ve read this book a half dozen times and I’m still trying to figure out some of the behind-the-scenes action. This book is great if you like long stories, big payoffs, and lots of world building. It keeps you guessing until the final ending. 

World War Z

Continuing with the feeling of Halloween, what could represent Halloween better than zombies?

If you’ve see the movie, forget the movie. It has almost no similarity to the book aside from the locations and not even then does it follow book. Now if they’d called the movie something else it would have been hailed as brilliant but fans of the book who saw it were outraged and made that known with good reason.  Instead of concentrating on individual survival, the novel concentrates on governments and groups as a whole.  The solution to the plague wasn’t even similar. The main character didn’t mention a family or work with Navy. The American government was barely involved since most of the East Coast was lost fairly early. The book didn’t even technically take place during the apocalypse.

The book starts with an introduction from the “author” who is a reporter. This intro explains the whole purpose was to document the years of the zombie war so that the history wasn’t lost or worse repeated. The book is a series of a cross between personal interviews and military reports about the plague years. It starts with the idea of this book and follows current government figures and survivors their survival stories back to Patient Zero. Once we figure out how the plague starts, there’s a small afterward from various interviewees that hint at what various governments are preparing next.

I don’t know how Max Brooks managed to write such a moving story about zombies but the realism of this book blows the stereotypical zombie movie out of the water. It’s easily imaginable that people would cope with a zombie invasion the same way the people in the book did. I can see something like the Reddecker plan being put into action and the consequences to the people involved would likely be the same. People talk about the “politics” being left out of the movie, but it’s not what I would typically think of as politics. There’s no voting or long winded speech making to groups of people. The political aspect is more the cause and effects of the government actions. All of the characters make decisions they regret and lose people to the virus. If you are a fan of zombies but you want a more realistic approach to the storytelling, this is nice change of pace from the action-packed, gore fest zombie movies tend to be. 

Vampires in the Lemon Grove

     A book of short stories I recently checked out from the library is Vampires in the Lemon Grove. Now I’m not usually a fan of short stories, I like my stories long, drawn out, and with sequels. Short stories rarely have enough depth to satisfy my need for conflict and escapist tendencies. If I want something short, my go-to is fanfiction (and I’m not ashamed of that either). The title of this book intrigued me though. I really wanted to know why vampires would be hanging out with a bunch of lemon trees.  Fortunately, I didn’t have long to wait since it was the first story of the book. It was a delightfully creepy little story about the only two vampires in the world and their lives together. Despite the old stories, blood did not sate the thirst of these vampires, nor did they stay young forever. Pretty much the only bits of the usual vampire legend that turned out to be true were the never-ending thirst, being able to turn into bats, and being fairly impervious to injury and death.  The whole story kept me thoroughly entertained and the ending was a bit sad and unexpected.

     The rest of the book, on the other hand, was a mixed bunch. The book was front loaded with the best stories and the ones at the end kind of had an “I need something to make this longer” vibe to it. Some of the earlier stories were enough to keep me awake at night for fear of nightmares. The ones at the end were the standard every day in the life of so and so types. If they’d stuck with the horror theme, I’d have been up all night and then hurrying to buy this book for my all friends who enjoy horror novels and movies. Horror is kind of a hit and miss genre though. Some things that scare some people won’t necessarily bother others. If you like creepy creatures and tales of metamorphosis, definitely check this book out. If you prefer zombies or action adventure in your horror tales, you might want to give it a pass. 

OMG! Internets!!!

Yea, Took a little longer to get our internet up and running after the move than I thought it would. Since my reviews have been delayed so long, I have a few extra written. I'm going to post a few extras over the next couple weeks to get all my Halloween/Creepy reviews posted.