Guards! Guards!

Waaaay back in 2009, a couple of friends recommended that I give three different Discworld novels a chance after I read The Colour of Magic (twice!) and The Light Fantastic.  The three novels that were recommended to me were Reaper Man (which I read in February 2009), Wyrd Sisters (which I read in July 2009), and Guards! Guards! I'm not proud of it, but it's taken me EIGHT YEARS to finally get around to reading Guards! Guards!  I've picked it up a few times, or moved it to the top of my reading pile.  But it always gets shoved back for some reason.  Well, no more.  Over the weekend I finally sat down and actually READ the thing!

Guards! Guards! is the first book about the Night Watch of Ankh-Morpork.  There's Captain Vimes, the drunken leader of the Watch.  His second in command, Sergeant Colon.  Corporal Nobbs, the opportunistic thief ("the door just happened to be open, honest" sort of thief).  And Carrot Ironfoundersson, their new recruit.  Carrot is a massive man who was raised by dwarves - his dwarven father sent him to Ankh-Morpork to make a man of him.  Carrot is the only one of the bunch who believes being a member of the Night's Watch is a worthy occupation (almost everyone else in the city, including the other three members of the Watch, think the Watch is useless).

A secret society is plotting against the Patrician (the ruler of Ankh-Morpork) - they've decided to summon a noble dragon to terrorize the city a little bit, then set someone up to conveniently proclaim himself descended from the old kings of Ankh-Morpork and slay the dragon.  But things go a bit wrong and the dragon ends up crowned king instead!  And only the members of the Night's Watch, with the help of the Librarian of Unseen University (who happens to be an ape),and Lady Ramkin (who happens to breed swamp dragons), are ready to risk being burnt to a crisp to dethrone the new monarch.

I know it's been almost a decade since I last read a Terry Pratchett novel, but I honestly think Guards! Guards! was my least favourite of the three Discworld books that were recommended to me.  I found the book a bit hard to get through, especially since about half of it seemed to be the set up for the latter half (the dragon wasn't crowned king until over halfway through the story!)  The most entertaining thing about it was Carrot, who took his duties seriously (he read the law book of Ankh-Morpork and would be constantly quoting it while arresting people.  Plus he was a crazy dwarven-trained machine who could defeat basically whole armies while trying to arrest people. Oh and every here and there you'd get a letter written from him to his dwarven parents.  He was fun!)

Vimes was a bit of a tough sell to me.  I was not a fan at all at the beginning.  But the way he played off other characters (specifically trying to reign in Carrot) was fun.  The other two members of the Watch were just okay in my mind.  They were fine, but they seemed much more like stereotypes than characters to me.  Lady Rankin was pretty fun though.  :)

So yeah.  This was not my favourite Discworld novel.  But I think it was better than The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic, so that's something.  I doubt I would recommend Guards! Guards! to anyone though.

When Demons Walk

It's been far too long since I've read a book by Patricia Briggs. I was bingeing on her books back in 2009. But then I started hoarding them for some reason instead of reading them. So I finally grabbed When Demons Walk off my shelf yesterday because it is a standalone book. I very quickly remembered why I liked her books so much as I very nearly finished the book last night (I very nearly didn't get any sleep in favour of finishing it - luckily I did stop to get a few hours of sleep).

When Demons Walk is the story of Shamera, a thief and mage who lives in the bad part of town. After several people, including her mage master, are killed, she is enlisted by Lord Kerim, Reeve of Southwood, to find the killer. Though Sham is not fond of the Easterners who conquered her city (and killed her family), she agrees to help find the killer to avenge her master. She poses as Kerim's mistress so she can enter the court and hopefully find the killer there. While the Easterners do not believe in magic, Sham and the other people of Southwood do; while Kerim does not believe it is possible, Sham knows they are hunting for a demon. It will take all of her magical power(and a good deal of luck) to find and defeat the demon.

I really liked Sham. She was smart, funny, and very capable as a heroine. As someone who grew up in the Court, she was able to blend in really well (and had a lot of fun playing the mistress who fawns over her lord). Her relationship with Kerim was quite a lot of fun with the two of them joking and teasing each other all the time (yet acting for everyone else around them). Quite honestly, a lot of the characters were fun. I loved the Shark and Dickon almost as much as Sham and Kerim.

I waan't a huge fan of the book's ending though. I felt like Briggs deliberately withheld details of the plan until they were happening to keep the reader in suspence. 

All in all, while I enjoyed reading When Demons Walk, it wasn't my favourite book by Briggs (it's quite possibly my least favourite, which is saying something about her writing - my lease favourite book was still one I didn't want to put down!!!) But if you want to read a better book from her Sianim series, go with Steal the Dragon or Masques instead.

The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made

I've been wanting to read The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, The Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made by Greg Sestero and Tom Bissell for awhile now.  My brother and I watched The Room many years ago with some friends; I bought The Disaster Artist as a gift for him several years back because I'd heard it was good; neither of us got around to reading it.  But when I saw a trailer for the movie based off of the book, I told my brother I would drop everything I was reading and read The Disaster Artist instead.  He originally thought I was joking, but true to my word, when he lent it to me I started it.

The Room is a movie created by Tommy Wiseau.  Wiseau writes, directs, produces, and stars in the movie (he plays the main character, Johnny).  Greg Sestero plays Mark, Johnny's best friend who is sleeping with his fiancee. It's a simple story with a simple plot, yet it manages to be absolutely crazy, with nonsensical dialogue, crazy plot holes, and a whole bunch of random shots of skylines.  It's honestly one of those movies you will be wondering how it got made as you are watching it.

The Disaster Artist is the story of how The Room got made, as told by Sestero.  It has two plot threads: the first one is about Sestero's life: how he got started in acting and how he met Wiseau (those two things are really closely intertwined).  The second is how Wiseau made the movie.  Slowly the two stories converge to give you one big long story.

The Disaster Artist is a fascinating look at not only how a notoriously bad movie got made, but also at how hard it is to succeed when you are not a "normal" person (particularly in a place as cutthroat as Hollywood).  I really enjoyed reading it, and look forward to James Franco's movie version this December!

The Ghost Bride

I've been wanting to read The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo ever since I came across it at work. It sounded like a very different but interesting read.  I ended up buying it for myself around my birthday.  I intended to get to it a bit sooner than I did (for some reason I got distracted by Charles de Lint's The Wild Wood), but I still managed to read it within a month of getting it.  I'm pretty proud of myself - with the amount of books I have piled up waiting to be read, that's super good timing!

The Ghost Bride is the story of Li Lan, the daughter of a merchant who has withdrawn from the world (and let his business and contacts slide as a result).  Because of this, Li Lan has no real prospects.  But another powerful family, the Lim family, contacts her father and requests that Li Lan become a ghost bride to their recently deceased son.  Their son, Lim Tian Ching, begins courting her in her dreams.  In an effort to rid herself of his attentions, she accidentally overdoses on a potion a medium gave her.  Sending her body into a coma, her spirit is released into the afterlife.  There she gets drawn up with the supernatural Er Lang, who is trying to figure out what is going on with the Lim family in the afterlife (because they clearly have some clout with the border guards).

I loved Choo's writing style.  It really set the stage for 19th century Malaya.  And I really liked the world of the Malayan afterlife.  My major complaint was that parts of the story were very predictable (such as who Li Lan's mother actually was in the afterlife, or what Li Lan would ultimately choose for her own life).  I know that some people (here are two examples) complained that Li Lan wasn't a very engaging character, but I didn't really have much of a problem with her.  While she sort of failed to save herself all the time, she was at least trying.  And since she was a young woman who was not at all worldly (and was largely left in her house, or only went outside when accompanied by her Amah), I thought the way she was seemed entirely fitting.

Overall, I enjoyed The Ghost Bride, and would be interesting in reading Choo's second book, whenever it comes out. :)

The Wild Wood

I've wanted to try reading something by Charles de Lint for awhile now, especially after hearing him speak at Ad Astra in Toronto a few years back. Somewhere along the way I picked up a copy of The Wild Wood, which sounded interesting. I don't know why exactly I decided to read it right now (I was going to start The Ghost Bride, but changed my mind at the last second and started this instead).

The Wild Wood is the story of Eithnie, an artist who has retreated to her cabin to try to reclaim her lost artistic muse. Her paintings have been lacking soul - and critics have been noticing this as well - so she's hoping getting back to nature will help. But after a particularly troubling vision of faerie creatures, she flees to her friends in the desert. Thanks to their wisdom, she returns, determined to discover whether the faerie creatures are real (and what they want if they are).

I really liked de Lint's writing, especially near the beginning of the book. I particularly liked his descriptions (they weren't as jarring as some of Stephen King's were in The Gunslinger). I also really liked Eithnie as a character; I felt I could really relate to her. 

I wasn't a fan of how abruptly the book seemed to end. I felt like Eithnie struggled to accept the faerie creatures for 3/4 of the book, but once she did accept them, things kind of fell into place a little too neatly (this was also not helped by the fact that the only person she really told everything to sort of accepted everything right away - it just seemed too easy I guess in a story that started off questioning what was real).

But for the most part, I quite enjoyed reading The Wild Wood. I'll have to give de Lint's other books a shot.

Aquaman: Volume 8

So here it is: the final Aquaman graphic novel before Aquaman: Rebirth, Aquaman: Out of Darkness. I saw it at the library and had to get it since I've read the other seven in the series.

Arthur wants to create an embassy on the American coast. That way Atlantis and the surface world will be able to learn about each other diplomatically. He asks Mera to head the mission. She reluctantly agrees.

Meanwhile a mysterious creature has been killing people on land. The attacks look like shark bites, which is odd because many of the killings have been happening on land, away from the sea. The FBI calls on Arthur to solve the case, which brings him into contact with Dead Water, a creature that can teleport through the tiniest drop of water. When Arthur discovers Dead Water used to be a man, he must go to extremes to stop him (including keeping the man extremely dehydrated so he won't revert back to Dead Water) and find out what happened.

I've been reading Rebirth since it started, but I missed all of these stories. It's nice to finally be caught up (and to know where Dead Water came from). I'm still waiting on that war of the seven seas promised at the end of Volume 4 though).

The Dark Tower: the Gunslinger

I've put off reading Stephen King's The Gunslinger for years. Everyone told me how good it was. But I didn't want to get bogged down in the huge Dark Tower series, so I never bothered to start it. But now that the movie is coming out this summer, I figured I should actually get my act together and read it.

The Gunslinger is the story of the last gunslinger chasing the man in black across the desert. We don't even learn the gunslinger's name until about halfway through the book (which seemed a bit odd to me). The gunslinger has been chasing the man in black for a long time, but is finally catching up to him. Along the way, the gunslinger meets some people and tells them stories about his past.

The atmosphere and worldbuilding of the book is great, particularly in the early chapters. And I was a fan of King's writing (minus the absurd number of references to the gunslinger's genitals - that seemed really weird as it kept going on through the whole book, especially since it came up pretty randomly - like not as he was having sex or something, but when he was like shooting monsters). But I had a really hard time connecting with the story, particularly in the latter half of the book (a boy from our world finds himself in the gunslinger's world; the two of them chase the man in black together). It was around page 200-250 where I knew I wasn't really interested in reading more of the series (and honestly wasn't too interested in finishing it but I persevered). Of course the book ends in a spot perfect for the sequel. But I still don't feel very interested in continuing (and actually feel less interested in seeing the movie now that I read the book).