Category: Reviews

Reviews of books, movies, tv shows and other items

Twelve Months – A Novel of The Dresden Files – by Jim Butcher – An SF&F Book Review

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I just finished the latest (and possibly the penultimate) Dresden Files novel; “Twelve Months.”  So, what should I say about it.  I won’t do a synopsis of the plot.  You can get that plenty of places but if you haven’t read it, you don’t want the spoilers.  And since this is book 18 (or 19 or 20?) of the series you wouldn’t be reading this book if you’re not already caught up on the saga.

So, I think I’ll just give my impressions of the book as a Harry Dresden book.  First of all, this book is a reaction to the havoc that the war in the last book “Battle Ground” wreaked on Harry’s life.  He lost several close friends and the love of his life so he’s not doing too well.  And so, this book chronicles Harry’s recovery from physical, emotional and supernatural wounds that he sustained.

And I would say that this book is much more of an emotional story than most of his earlier books.  And that’s not to say that Harry Dresden has just found his humanity in this book.  He was always an emotional man but I think the author is trying to emphasize that this older, wiser Harry is less motivated by anger and more willing to use empathy to think his way out of a conflict.  He’s even able to reason with a Lovecraftian monster to avoid a lose-lose situation.

And another observation I have is that I think I can see some of the loose ends being tied together.  If the next book is the last chapter of the Dresden Files, then he’s going to have to settle the hash of about twenty major characters and a hundred minor ones.  And some of these major characters are tied to railroad tracks with locomotives within sight.  And there’s no off-ramp for Harry.  He’s slowly advanced over the course of the series from an almost comically overmatched novice at magic to one of the top ten powers in the supernatural world.  He has friendships, alliances and vendettas with virtually all of the supernatural powers that exist in his crowded and lovingly detailed urban fantasy universe.  There is the White Council of Wizards, the Summer Fey, the Winter Fey, Ghouls, Lycanthropes, a Titan, the Black Court Vampires and the White Court Vampires.  There aren’t any more Red Court Vampires because Harry killed off the whole clan in an earlier book.  How exactly Jim Butcher intends to pull the plug on Harry’s adventures is a complete mystery to me.  Killing him off doesn’t seem to make any of the subplots work better and I just don’t see how he “retires.”  Too many enormously powerful forces want him dead.

But suffice it to say, if you’ve enjoyed the earlier Dresden Files installments then you will inhale the four hundred sixty odd pages of “Twelve Months” in a couple of days and immediately wonder why Jim Butcher is leaving you hanging waiting for the conclusion.  So, who do I recommend this book to?  Why, anyone who has gotten this far in the series of course.  And for that audience I wholeheartedly recommend it.

Have Patience Oh My Friend Polemarchus

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So, today Camera Girl asked me whether I had figured out the plot for my sequel to “The Sniper.”  I had to confess that my efforts to outline the story had so far been pretty feeble.  And this has a lot to do with work and the annoying responsibilities it entails.  But I have been thinking of late about a plot line having to do with a very, very wealthy and powerful character (Connors) trying to change drastically the way that Americans live.

And this ties in with the current state of affairs in these United States.  It’s apparent that people on the Left and the Right are turning to populist leaders and movements because the American dream doesn’t seem to be working very well lately.  Of course, the two sides of the political “binary” would attack the problem in completely different ways.  The Mamdani wing would confiscate all wealth and “redistribute” it in a way that would turn the United States into Cuba or worse.  But even the Right hasn’t managed to turn America into a capitalist wonderland.  Trump has made some moves to try and reverse the off-shoring of American industrial jobs but so far, the results have not been robust in my opinion.

So, I look at this situation and I think that this may be the challenge of our age.  And suppose the political parties aren’t up to the challenge.  And what if the corporations aren’t interested in being part of the solution.  If I want to get dystopian, I can have us descend into a rerun of the end of the Roman Republic with our own Marius, Sulla, Pompey and Caesar.  We could run that playbook and end up with an Augustus ushering in the approximately five centuries of American imperial rule by destroying the republic.

But what if I write a more hopeful tale.  Not a utopia but a technocratic attempt to find a better way to organize society.  Of course, artificial intelligence (AI) is the boogeyman of the day right now and it gets stood up as the cause of and cure for all our problems.  So, I can easily be accused of jumping on the bandwagon if I have Connors use some form of AI to help design a different framework for integrating people with an optimal result for the great majority of the population.

Now, I freely admit I haven’t the foggiest idea what that would look like or even if such a thing is even theoretically possible.  I wouldn’t want to end up looking like Plato does when someone reads through his “Republic” and the whole thing is a bunch of feeble arguments where he knocks down a bunch of straw men on his way to enthroning “philosopher kings” as his best and brightest ruling over his ant hive of an ancient brave new world.

But I think I would like to play around with this idea of a trillionaire re-ordering society along logical lines to optimize human happiness.  So that’s kind of my take on the sequel’s plot.  Of course, the first question I’m asking myself is whether the attempt is a success or a failure.  I’ll have to roll it around to see which is more interesting.  Have patience oh my friend Polemarchus.

Books and Bugs

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So, today’s post is about nothing.  I’m involved in a bunch of random things right now.  I’m reading two novels.  I’ve got Jim Butcher’s latest Harry Dresden book “Twelve Months” and I’m also reading a very old book called “Buddenbrooks” by the German author Thomas Mann.  And you couldn’t hope to find two more completely different stories if you tried.  But I have an interest in reading both.  But the Dresden book flies by while Mann’s description of the 19th century events in the lives of the merchant family Buddenbrook is a task that I peck away at a few pages at a sitting.  The translator saw fit to preserve the large chunks of French that Mann incorporated in the speech of some of his characters.  And the religiosity and the local customs of Northern Germany are curiosities for a modern American reader.

I’m also involved in a microscopic inspection of the flora in the fields.  I mentioned in an earlier post that I couldn’t find any preying mantis egg sacs in the yard this year and assumed that the mantids that I introduced into the yard in the last couple of years weren’t capable of surviving New England winters.  Well, either that isn’t correct or the native populations are making their appearance this year.  In two different areas of the yard on two different species of flowering plants (cone flowers and day lilies) I found the specimens photographed below.

Now, these critters are infinitesimally small.  And considering my old eyes, I’m shocked I found then at all.  And as things stand now, I haven’t been able to locate them again on the plants where I originally spotted them.  But this doesn’t discourage me.  After following some of the mantids around the fields last year I know that they get around and move quite a lot to find the diet of tiny bugs they need to fuel their substantial growth potential.

And I don’t mind saying that finding these little monsters cheered me up considerably.  I really do enjoy hunting them around the fields and watching them go about their work of stalking, killing and eating tiny flies and other arthropods.  Their skill is considerable and their appetites remarkable for something so small.

And the other thing keeping me busy is preparation for an upcoming birthday party for one of the grandchildren.  I found out that the propane cylinder I was trying to get refilled was too old.  Apparently after five years it’s considered unsafe and has to be recertified for use.  So, the Tractor Supply folks sold me a new twenty-pound cylinder for eighty bucks and now I have both.  I wonder how much they’ll charge me to “recertify” the old one?  I’m guessing something like eighty bucks.  After all, we’ve got to do whatever we can to discourage the use of evil hydrocarbons!  But it’s fine.  The burgers and dogs will still taste just as good cooked by the new propane.

Well, that’s enough for now.  I’m watching my Amazon account today.  I sold 613 pages of “The Sniper” on Kindle Unlimited today.  That’s almost three books worth and that is pretty good for my sales output so I want to see if it increases before I go to bed.

Zodiac (2007) – A Movie Review

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Zodiac is a crime thriller released in 2007.  It was directed by David Fincher and based on the book of the same name by Robert Graysmith.  It is a fairly accurate portrayal of the actual Zodiac murders in the late 1960s to early 1970s in Northern California.  At least five people were attacked by the Zodiac killer in three separate events and several other crimes were also attributed to him.  And the taunting letters that the murderer sent to the newspapers had the residents of the city and suburbs of San Francisco in a panic about the safety of their school age children on account of his threats to target a school bus.

The bulk of the movie is the story of reporters and detectives working on the case following up on the evidence and sifting through the suspects.  The cast is headed up by such notables as Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo and Robert Downey Jr.  But even the minor parts are ably performed with special notice for John Carroll Lynch as Arthur Leigh Allen who was the primary suspect and probably has the highlight scene during his police interrogation.

The murder scenes are brutal and creepy in the extreme and the whole film has a dismal sense of foreboding about it that reinforces the sense of dread that the populace felt during the Zodiac’s reign of terror.  The investigation into the killings never succeeded in an indictment even though the circumstantial evidence was pretty convincing.  And the protracted length of the search is portrayed as having destroyed the careers of the two reporters working on the story and also negatively impacted the SFPD team that was involved.  And eventually that is the focus of the movie.

And now my recommendation.  I thought this movie was highly entertaining.  The director succeeds in maintaining a claustrophobic atmosphere around the investigators while believably showing us where the blunders and problems hampered the search for the killer.  We can see how law enforcement back in the 1970s is hampered by a lack of coordination between jurisdictions and what we would consider primitive forensic methods.

Eventually one of newspaper investigators devoted years of his life (and the destruction of his marriage) to ferreting out the neglected details that all link back to the same suspect.  But all of it was in vain when that suspect died of natural causes before he could be indicted.  But it is a fascinating and creepy real life murder mystery that I can highly recommend to folks who like this fare.

Keanu Goes to the Devil

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Keanu Goes to the Devil

I’ve mentioned the movie “Constantine” tangentially while discussing comic book movies and some other topics that occupied me back a few years ago.  This 2005 movie stars Keanu Reeves as a Los Angeles based exorcist and general enemy of demonic forces.  He’s a sort of angsty noir character who is angry at heaven since he is doomed to hell because he attempted suicide as a teenager over the horror he experienced as a psychic.

The movie follows a “logic” about the rules in place for angels and demons that makes absolutely no sense but allows for the plot devices that move the story along its arc.  And much of the action is plodding and mechanical.  And yet I find myself watching this turkey (or parts of it) over and over again.  Why?

Well, the two aspects of the movie that stand out in my head are two very different things.  The first item is the visualization of Hell.  You could say this is just a special effects technique but it really is a rich imagining of the underworld.  The idea of Hell as our own world but turned into a burned-out husk makes for a vivid background.  And then the demons as these mutilated corpses with the tops of their heads sheared off is bizarrely fitting.

But the second item is, I think, the more compelling.  It is the representation of Lucifer during his arrival to harvest the soul of Constantine.  As promised in the country song, the devil wears a white suit.  As played by Peter Stormare, Lucifer is a witty, amiable fellow who enjoys chatting with his old acquaintance Constantine prior to bringing him back to Hell where he claims he has “a whole theme park full of red delights” for Constantine to “enjoy.”  He even helps Constantine light his cigarette when the exorcist can’t manage his lighter because of the cut finger tendons incurred when he slit his own wrists in order to summon up Lucifer.  Of course, the devil can’t help pulling the flame away two or three times just for fun.  It’s this pettiness and banality that adds interest to the part.  It’s contrasted with the menace that shows through whenever Lucifer’s plans are challenged either by demon, angel or divine law itself.  But it’s the human face of evil that makes Lucifer compelling.  His vindictiveness, cruelty and pride show up as the proof that angels, devils and man are all creations of the same maker.  We all have the same stamp.  We’ve been given free will and we can use it to reach a higher ground or fall off the mountain.

So that’s why I guess I enjoy watching this silly movie (or at least parts of it).  Not for the absurd plot or the goofy take on Christian theology as it relates to Hell.  I guess I just like to think about Satan being this provincial, bureaucratic apparatchik fighting with humans and God to protect his turf and cause as much mischief as he can.  It just seems to fit what I’ve seen of human nature.  At least some of it.

The Green Hills of Earth (1951) by Robert A Heinlein – A Science Fiction Book Discussion

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Well, I’ve been having so much fun with the recent science fiction discussions I thought I’d reminisce about the science fiction stories that had the biggest effect on me when I was first starting out reading science fiction.  And the one that really impressed me the most early on was Heinlein’s short story collection “The Green Hills of Earth.”

I think it was my introduction to his “Future History” stories.  And I remember that reading these stories was different from anything else I had read up to this point.  With the space opera stories even as a child I could sense that there was a lot of handwaving going on to justify all the faster than light travel, humanoid aliens and super-duper energy weapons and shields that somehow translated 19th century naval exploration and warfare into interstellar adventure.

His stories attempted to describe the nuts and bolts of building space stations and lunar colonies based on the best information that existed at the time.  Some of the stories (about Mars and Venus) were highly inaccurate.  But the stories about the Moon are still quite close to what could and maybe will be accomplished.  In that vein I think the story that exemplifies Heinlein’s ability to make believable his picture of a lunar human environment is “Gentlemen, Be Seated!”  And the plot and characters are both so skillfully sketched that disbelief is completely suspended right through to the end.

Now some of the stories aren’t that believable.  “—We Also Walk Dogs” involves a very clever story about a consulting business that accepts the assignment of inventing artificial gravity in order to accommodate aliens from worlds that have both higher and lower gravity than Earth during a conference on Earth.  Basically, they bribe a brilliant physicist to accomplish this “simple” task by stealing a museum artifact that he covets.  As I said, it’s a ridiculous premise but Heinlein portrays the Machiavellian machinations of this seemingly unlimited consulting firm very skillfully and with great gusto.  So that even a story as unbelievable as this one is enjoyed on its own terms.

And that’s the thing with most of these stories.  The writing is so skillful that the reader never feels let down by the quality of the stories.  The characters are interesting and for the most part believable.  The plots are clever and as I said in many cases plausible.  And at the time this was far from typical in the stories that could be found on the science fiction shelf in the library or book store.

Here’s a list of the stories that were in that collection.  See if any are or were favorites of yours.

“Delilah and the Space Rigger” (1949; originally published in Blue Book)

“Space Jockey” (1947; originally published in The Saturday Evening Post)

“The Long Watch” (1949; originally published in The American Legion Magazine)

“Gentlemen, Be Seated!” (1948; originally published in Argosy Magazine)

“The Black Pits of Luna” (1948; originally published in The Saturday Evening Post)

“It’s Great to Be Back!” (1947; originally published in The Saturday Evening Post)

“—We Also Walk Dogs” (1941; originally published in Astounding Science Fiction)

“Ordeal in Space” (1948; originally published in Town & Country)

“The Green Hills of Earth” (1947; originally published in The Saturday Evening Post)

“Logic of Empire” (1941; originally published in Astounding Science Fiction)

Guest Contributor – Tregonsee – 09JUN2026 – Tregonsee’s Three Pronouncements About Stuff

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Long ago my wife and daughters found my pronouncements amusing. I codified them in a set of rules (which became referred to as the Rules of Acquisition after the Ferengi rules in ST: Deep Space 9). I have three related to fiction and opinions

16. Opinions are like certain bodily orifices. Critically important but not something decent people expose in public.

17. In fiction (Written, Visual, or Interactive) I desire a story and escape. If I want morals I’ll hear a sermon, if I want to work at something I’ll go to work and get paid for it.

18. This is not to say a writer or other content producer may NOT provide meaning or morals. Just don’t shove it in my face unceasingly (Remember that orifice in rule 16? You wouldn’t shove that in my face either).

And yes Clarke and Asimov are far more of the “Idea” arm of SciFi. Asimov often has to work to make his male characters two dimensional. His female characters rarely rose to that and are almost literally paper cutouts. Clarke uses some stereotypes in his early short stories, but almost all his stories even the Big ones like 2001 , Childhood’s End and Rendevous with Rama depend far more on story (and the first two are reusing parts of several short stories pasted together) than on character. I think it is why Asimov and Clarke excel in the shorter forms (up to about Novella) but struggle more ion the longer forms. This may also stem from the fact that from mid ’40s to mid 60’s the primary form (and most financially viable form) of Scifi was the magizines either as short stories or serialized for longer pieces. These forms make character development harder I would think.

photog’s Second Law of Science Fiction

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Yesterday I formulated my first law of science fiction:

photog’s First Law of Science Fiction – Thou shalt not change more than one basic law of physics when making a good story.

Well, that was so much fun I thought I’d try for another one:

photog’s Second Law of Science Fiction – Thou shalt not bore the poor reader to death.

And really this should be the first law because it really is essential.  Honestly, if the reader is interested, he will probably forgive anything else; excessive use of time travel, repetitive battle scenes, gratuitous sex and violence, even scurrilous attacks on political enemies.  As long as the story keeps the reader’s interest, it’s a success.

Now this is an iron law for any kind of fiction.  But because different genres have different readers it behooves the author to pay attention to what his particular genre considers interesting.  So, if you write romantasy you must make sure you include plenty of female protagonists being ravaged by minotaurs or some other equally absurd mythical beast.

But if you write science fiction and especially if you write hard science fiction you have to make sure you can pass the science literacy test when it comes to the gadgets and phenomena that you hang your tale on.  So, that’s step one.

Step two is to make the characters and the plot interesting.  And this is where some of the best hard sf writers are found lacking.  For myself, personally, Arthur C Clarke seemed to have a hard time writing characters that were actual people.  Most of the time there just didn’t seem to be a recognizable human being on the page.  And I’m not saying he was a bad writer.  He wasn’t.  He was quite skilled.  It just seemed that he didn’t care about the human aspect in the story.  Now compare this to Isaac Asimov.  When I recently (four or five years ago) reread the Foundation books I thought the plot was at times marginal.  But even the less developed characters seemed to have recognizable voices and personalities.  Asimov managed to make the characters seem somewhat alive.  And live humans are interesting to live humans.  And since the people buying books are (for the most part) live humans it becomes critically important to write characters that appeal to the book buying public.

And that is why even the most technically savvy sf author must (in my opinion) learn how to simulate human characters.  And that is okay.  Because we don’t expect Tolstoy.  You can make the characters resemble almost any humans you’ve ever met.  In fact, it’s better if you mix it up and include a bunch of different types.  This will help to avoid the serious problem of all your characters sounding and thinking exactly like you.  And believe me, that is a big problem.

So, I guess the second law means that a good science fiction writer must also be a good writer in general if he doesn’t want to fail miserably.

Is Astrophage Science Fiction?

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Last week I reviewed “Project Hail Mary” and I approved of it as high quality science fiction.  But am I being consistent?  Should I be calling it fantasy?  In other words, can a story based on a completely impossible premise be considered science anything?  So, let’s talk about this.

Andy Weir used a microorganism of extraterrestrial origin as the basis for his story.  This lifeform which he called astrophage had a complement of remarkable properties that made it both the source of an existential threat to human existence on Earth and the key to human interstellar travel.  Astrophage can convert light into mass and it can also convert mass into light.  This is “explained” by claiming that it can harness the energy produced when neutrinos and their anti-matter opposites (which apparently are also just neutrinos) annihilate each other forming light.  So somehow, the living cell can store neutrinos and then harvest them to produced light that can be used as a motive force to propel the astrophage at velocities approaching light speed.

Okay, this is gibberish.  None of those things can be done in a particle accelerator, never mind inside the protoplasm of a cell.  So, all of this is no different than E. E. Doc Smith pointing to his “inertialess” drive that allows the Galactic Patrol and their Boskonian enemies to hurtle through interstellar space at many time the speed of light.  It’s just hand-waving to allow the action in the story to occur in a time period that allows for a fun story.

Now, granted, Weir at least restricts his velocities to the limit that General Relativity permits.  And he allows time dilation and other relativistic effects to govern the fate of his astronauts.  But having his starship reach 0.92 c is based on an energy production method that is completely inexplicable by any physics or biology that we can point to.

So, why isn’t that fantasy?

I think I’m going to invent a rule of science fiction.

photog’s First Law of Science Fiction – Thou shalt not change more than one basic law of physics when making a good story.

So, if Andy Weir wants astrophage to have a biological basis for matter/antimatter conversion then everything else about his story has to be “legit.”  So, he can use astrophage as his workaround for amazing energy density for things like interstellar flight but everything else still requires the laws of physics, chemistry and biology to work the way they do in the real world.  Now some folks might begrudge him xenonite because somehow, he turned a noble gas into unobtanium but there’s enough wiggle room in chemistry so that depending on what else besides xenon is in xenonite we could imagine all the properties of this make-believe material without calling down the lightning of the gods of the periodic table.

So, I think that’s fair.  If you only make up one crazy make-believe MacGuffin to allow for the action in your story then I won’t cry foul and demote the story to the depths of the fantasy dungeon.  I mean, who could ask for more than that.

Word Count

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What is the perfect length for a story?  Well, I’m sure there is no agreement in the world on that.  And I must confess I have enjoyed books that go over a thousand pages (counting the “Lord of the Rings” as one story) and short stories that barely cover a handful of pages.

But I have an opinion and since I get to throw it out onto the internet for as long as I can pay for my hosting costs, I feel I should elaborate.  After all, I have to write my five hundred words tonight.  Although that length is hardly a perfect length for a work.

I believe that between 10,000 and 35,000 words is the sweet spot for telling a story.  I think that’s somewhere between a long short-story and a good-sized novella.  So, I’ve rejected the majority of modern novels and definitely all of the thousand-page potboilers that have been in fashion for the last few decades.  And look, that rejects the “Lord of the Rings!”  Well, hear me out.

I think long books are by nature composite creations.  They consist of a bunch of chapters strung together to get our hero from Point A to Point B.  And in my opinion each chapter (or at most a few chapters together) is a separate story.  This is like a play or a movie having multiple acts or scenes.  You string those together and you tell a larger story.  But usually in a movie or a play there is a climactic scene when all of the emotional power of the story is unleashed.  If the writer is exceptionally skilled, he can drag out the emotional interest from the beginning of the story until this climax.  But no matter how well-written the longer story is it doesn’t have the same impact as a shorter work that can be digested in one sitting.  Even a long movie has the danger that it can overtax the watcher’s attention and patience.

I think that if I kept my work within that 10,000-35,000-word range I could make the maximum impact on the reader.  Of course, 10,000 is really close to the minimum that can result in a rich word-picture.  But I think if an author works carefully to paint a vivid sketch of a scene even the 10,000 should yield a memorable story.

Of course, I am painfully aware that the commercial market for shorter fiction is essentially nil.  I was reading recently that science fiction short story magazines and collections don’t sell at all.  So that guarantees that authors will continue to pump out door-stops.  And honestly, the longer episodic genre books are perfectly enjoyable just as they are.  But in my opinion the true masterpieces of writing are a shorter type of story that weaves a tapestry in front of the reader’s mind in a unified effect that goes from beginning to end in a single story arc that satisfies the reader’s interest in the subject and provides a legitimate conclusion to the story.

Well, anyway that’s how it seems to me.