Reading, Watching, Playing
Oct. 23rd, 2023 01:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
a_cubedReading
As noted last time, I enjoyed T L Huchu's Edinburgh Nights starter, so I caught up with books two and three of the series. These filled in a little more of the current situation in the world, but I'm still confused as to how that world relates to the real world. There's a fair amount of overlap, but it's unclear if this is a parallel history with magic or if it's a post-apocalyptic future where magic is a hidden history until the apocalypse. Despite that, I enjoyed the main stories. If you liked the first one, these continue quite well in the same vein.
After that I went back and re-read Lev Grossman's The Magicians Trilogy. As I've noted elsewhere, the TV version of this is one of my favourite shows and I regularly re-watch it. I've only read the original books once, though. The TV version is definitely "inspired by" rather than "adapting". While many of the simple versions of plot points in the TV show are drawn from incidents in the books, there are substantial differences as well. The first book in particular is much more of a condensed parody/response to Harry Potter (Brakebills), while the second half is a parody/response to Narnia (Fillory). It really is a book of two halves. The TV show leans far more heavily on the Fillory stuff from the start, with the Brakebills elements being more of a backdrop, albeit with some episodes focussing more on that side of things. I enjoyed the books on a re-read, but I still prefer the TV show. There're some comics which follow the books rather than the TV shows. The first shows many of the events of the books from Alice's point of view. One of the criticisms of the first book is that it's told almost completely from Quentin's POV. The second reveals Julia's story from the timeline of the first, in flashback, covering about a third of the book, with some other viewpoints, but still about half Quentin. The third book shares Quentin's and Janet's viewpoints about equally. So, Alice's story should be interesting and I mean to get to it. Then there's a sequel of a "new class" at Brakebills which I'll get to at some point.
Having finished a re-read I went on to Ann Leckie's latest Raadchai (how many "a"s I can never remember) universe book "Translated State". This was an interesting continuation in a minor way of some of the main plotlines from the original trilogy, but the focus of the story is on showing the human-derived Presger Translators. This made somewhat uncomfortable reading at times, but Leckie did a good job of, for me at least, not going over the line in pushing me into someone's head where I really didn7t want to be. I was reminded of my review of one of Juliet McKenna's early-ish books where she puts us in the head of a not-as-bad-as-the-rest member of a vicious society. I found that one really hard going because she really put us into his head and it wasn't a nice place to be. Leckie did a better job os this, I think.
Now I've started a re-read again, this time of Max Gladstone's Craft series. He's recently published the start of a sequel series which will "complete" the story of that world. I remember the world generally, but it was good enough for a re-read and that was on my agenda to be re-read at some point, so I decided I'd do the re-read before the firsts book of the new series.
Watching
Continuing a re-watch of NuWho with $DAUGHTER. We went through just the specials of Tennant in preparation for the upcoming sequences in November. Then we went through almost all of Smith (we skipped A Christmas Carol by mistake but didn't go back when we realised) and then continued through into Capaldi. Not loving the treatment of Danny Pink by the Doctor. The really deep antipathy to soldiers seems to come out of nowhere with this doctor, just to generate the tension with Danny. Some of it really is just over the top. Skipped "Kill the Moon" episode because it's just too ridiculous even for Dr Who.
I caught up on season 2 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Mostly enjoyable. I sometimes quite like musical episodes (Buffy! The Magicians (multiple times)) but I couldn't get on with the musical episode of SNW. Maybe it was the style of music. Maybe the songs were just too long. Maybe a combination. I mostly skipped the songs. The season ends on a huge cliffhanger. They've no introduced most of the main cast of TOS except for Bones, Sulu and Chekov. I'm definitely expecting to see Bones introduced, and probably Sulu and Chekov as well. The crossover episode with Lower Decks was fun, even though I don't watch that show.
Finished the Wheel of Time S2 and the Witcher S2 re-watch (didn't re-watch S3 since I'd only just watched it for the first time).
Playing
Continuing with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Close to beginning the final battle against the bid bad. Brief couple of sessions of local coop play with $DAUGHTER on Human Fall Flat's most recent extra level. Some very tricky platform and laddering in a game where the imprecision of character movement is a big part of the base. We're probably on the last or next to last section of what's turning out to be quite a hard and involved level. Thinking about what I might play after BotW is finished. There's a DLC for BotW or I've been looking at the Switch port of The Witcher III: The Wild Hunt, which has had good reviews as an RPG.
As noted last time, I enjoyed T L Huchu's Edinburgh Nights starter, so I caught up with books two and three of the series. These filled in a little more of the current situation in the world, but I'm still confused as to how that world relates to the real world. There's a fair amount of overlap, but it's unclear if this is a parallel history with magic or if it's a post-apocalyptic future where magic is a hidden history until the apocalypse. Despite that, I enjoyed the main stories. If you liked the first one, these continue quite well in the same vein.
After that I went back and re-read Lev Grossman's The Magicians Trilogy. As I've noted elsewhere, the TV version of this is one of my favourite shows and I regularly re-watch it. I've only read the original books once, though. The TV version is definitely "inspired by" rather than "adapting". While many of the simple versions of plot points in the TV show are drawn from incidents in the books, there are substantial differences as well. The first book in particular is much more of a condensed parody/response to Harry Potter (Brakebills), while the second half is a parody/response to Narnia (Fillory). It really is a book of two halves. The TV show leans far more heavily on the Fillory stuff from the start, with the Brakebills elements being more of a backdrop, albeit with some episodes focussing more on that side of things. I enjoyed the books on a re-read, but I still prefer the TV show. There're some comics which follow the books rather than the TV shows. The first shows many of the events of the books from Alice's point of view. One of the criticisms of the first book is that it's told almost completely from Quentin's POV. The second reveals Julia's story from the timeline of the first, in flashback, covering about a third of the book, with some other viewpoints, but still about half Quentin. The third book shares Quentin's and Janet's viewpoints about equally. So, Alice's story should be interesting and I mean to get to it. Then there's a sequel of a "new class" at Brakebills which I'll get to at some point.
Having finished a re-read I went on to Ann Leckie's latest Raadchai (how many "a"s I can never remember) universe book "Translated State". This was an interesting continuation in a minor way of some of the main plotlines from the original trilogy, but the focus of the story is on showing the human-derived Presger Translators. This made somewhat uncomfortable reading at times, but Leckie did a good job of, for me at least, not going over the line in pushing me into someone's head where I really didn7t want to be. I was reminded of my review of one of Juliet McKenna's early-ish books where she puts us in the head of a not-as-bad-as-the-rest member of a vicious society. I found that one really hard going because she really put us into his head and it wasn't a nice place to be. Leckie did a better job os this, I think.
Now I've started a re-read again, this time of Max Gladstone's Craft series. He's recently published the start of a sequel series which will "complete" the story of that world. I remember the world generally, but it was good enough for a re-read and that was on my agenda to be re-read at some point, so I decided I'd do the re-read before the firsts book of the new series.
Watching
Continuing a re-watch of NuWho with $DAUGHTER. We went through just the specials of Tennant in preparation for the upcoming sequences in November. Then we went through almost all of Smith (we skipped A Christmas Carol by mistake but didn't go back when we realised) and then continued through into Capaldi. Not loving the treatment of Danny Pink by the Doctor. The really deep antipathy to soldiers seems to come out of nowhere with this doctor, just to generate the tension with Danny. Some of it really is just over the top. Skipped "Kill the Moon" episode because it's just too ridiculous even for Dr Who.
I caught up on season 2 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Mostly enjoyable. I sometimes quite like musical episodes (Buffy! The Magicians (multiple times)) but I couldn't get on with the musical episode of SNW. Maybe it was the style of music. Maybe the songs were just too long. Maybe a combination. I mostly skipped the songs. The season ends on a huge cliffhanger. They've no introduced most of the main cast of TOS except for Bones, Sulu and Chekov. I'm definitely expecting to see Bones introduced, and probably Sulu and Chekov as well. The crossover episode with Lower Decks was fun, even though I don't watch that show.
Finished the Wheel of Time S2 and the Witcher S2 re-watch (didn't re-watch S3 since I'd only just watched it for the first time).
Playing
Continuing with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Close to beginning the final battle against the bid bad. Brief couple of sessions of local coop play with $DAUGHTER on Human Fall Flat's most recent extra level. Some very tricky platform and laddering in a game where the imprecision of character movement is a big part of the base. We're probably on the last or next to last section of what's turning out to be quite a hard and involved level. Thinking about what I might play after BotW is finished. There's a DLC for BotW or I've been looking at the Switch port of The Witcher III: The Wild Hunt, which has had good reviews as an RPG.
