June 26

Losing Latitude:Part Four by Cory Cramer

Losing Latitude part 4

Review of Part One
Review of Part Two
Review of Part Three

I really enjoy rereading Ann Rice’s The Witching Hour over and over. But I rarely read the whole book. Instead I always skip to the middle, to the long, expansive Talamasca file on the History of the Mayfair witches. I don’t particularly like Rowan Mayfair and find her story to be interesting only because of the multitude of little connections between the history of the places and people that came before that she runs into and doesn’t even understand.

What does this have to do with part four of Losing Latitude by Cory Cramer? With this part the story is shaping up the same way.

Part four, The Last Place to Run, is almost entirely sections of Bucky McGee’s journal. Of course, in this installment they take a wild, suspenseful twist that still doesn’t explain the demon that’s been chasing him. But by the end of this section the tale is hard to put down, and leaves the reader with something akin to outrage. It simply cannot end there.

As for Lilly, the young adult who lost her parents to a shipwreck and became an unexpected millionaire, well, she has about as much “screen time” as her dead father in this part of the story. She’s not as unsympathetic of a character as I find Rowan Mayfair to be, but the focus so far is on the voice of Buck. This is partly because for the length of the tale so far Lilly has been in a naval hospital recovering from injuries received during the shipwreck that killed her parents. But it’s also because with her parents dead only the journal can drive the plot forward toward its resolution.

I do wonder how one more ninety five page installment can bring Lilly from her current position to solving the mystery that led her father to sail into the storm rather than away from it. But there has definitely been growth, not just of the story, but also of Cramer’s writing skills as the story has progressed. If he can clinch this tale, and continues to build his craft I could easily see his next stories published outside the sphere of self-publishing.

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June 22

The Incredible Hulk


The movie was fantastic. So much better than the Ang Lee BS fest. Not just on the level of action either. They managed to make this movie both quite character driven and exciting, action wise. It was nicely paced and fun with plenty of comic book-ish shots (which is the one thing I did like about the first movie, and here they did it better, especially in the final fight between Abomination and Hulk.) We all liked that the theme of this Jekyll and Hyde story and it came off clear enough that even the kids picked up on it.

They also showed the Hulk as a primal, angry being, particularly in the final fight where the brutality spins out of control. And the conflict of the god-like Hulk who is powerful enough on his own having to face, essentially himself, only with military training and the true heart of a monster kept me interested.

Little things, like mythos jokes and the real life “of course” moments of two college kids catching a fight between Hulk and the military on cell phone cameras definitely added to the fun. Over all, it’s fun, it’s fantastic. It’s not quite the same as Iron Man, but then the whole Iron Man mythos has a soul that Hulk doesn’t. Bruce Banner isn’t looking to save the world, and his powers are caused by an accident. He isn’t the hero that runs toward danger, who acts like a shield between the bad stuff and the average person. He’s the one who tries to mind his own business, only stepping up to the plate when either the ones he loves are in direct danger or there’s absolutely no other option.

It’s the base story that prevents this movie from being on the same level as Iron Man or the first Spiderman movie. But with that taken into consideration it’s worth the full price of the ticket and has been put on my must own list.

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June 19

True Blood aka Sookie Stackhouse the series

Finally! Here you can see photos from the new HBO series, True Blood, based on Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse series. For those not in the know these books are urban fantasy with a romance angle about a rural mind reader in Louisiana who falls for a vampire and ends up getting sucked into the supernatural world (no pun intended).

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