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What a riot.

Revisado: 12-27-19

It took eight years, but Ben Arronovich finally wrote a follow up to Midnight Riot. While Peter Grant series runs seven books deep at this point, the books have since 2011 been characterized mainly by a squandering of the energy and vibrancy of the original book in favor of a circular, go-no-where hunt for a single criminal that ate up the better part of a decade.

Lies Sleeping, for better or worse, is the end of the Faceless Man arc of the Rivers book, and I could not be happier to see it end. In fact, having written himself into a corner and no longer able to stretch out the frustrating non-mystery, Arronovich has written a kinetic, exciting, absolutely gripping page turner with a legitimate sense of motion, something that's been missing from the series since it's inception.

Kobna Holdbrook-Smith continues to elevate the series, given the thankless, and frankly beneath his talent, task of turning five books of potboiling into listenable product is able to put his talents on full display here, a cast of near a dozen characters with unique and striking voices. He is the hero of this series, and there's not much more to be said.

It remains to be seen if Arronovich, freed from his worst temptation is able to elevate the actual stories to Holdbrook-Smith's level, but I no longer feel like giving up.

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Far from Divine

Revisado: 05-17-18

The Count of Monte Cristo is three books, really, and not just because of it's heavy size. The first book, detailing everything up to Edmond finding the legendary treasure, is excellent. An invigorating tale of despair, providence, hope, and friendship in the face of bitter betrayal.

The second book, detailing everything from Chapter 30 onward, is a miserable slog of french nobility sitting around tables and talking about nothing. It's excruciating to get through. It does not help that a massive time skip occurs, returning Edmond to us as a distant, fey creature who has already, for every intent and purpose, already accomplished his revenge and the reader just being shown the fall out.

It is strange to read The Count of Monte Cristo. The Main Character suffers, but once he finds his treasure, he stops struggling. It is a story of vengance, yes, but it is Vengeance bought with infinite resources and endless money. There is never a risk of exposure for Edmond, who is too brilliant to be caught out, and never a risk of failure, for he is too skilled to be slain. It is, in a word, very dull for a vast majority of the read.

The final act of the book reveals The Count to be far more twisted the text actually seems to realise. At some point during the time skip he began to conflate his petty revenge with the Will of God, which goes from being invigorating and just to strange and kind of concerning. He is obsessed with pushing his friends to the brink of suicide, no less than three times, only to deliver them from death with gifts of gold and treasure that he was with-holding for his own perverse pleasure. So close do people, his friends, come to death so that he could play God, and even in the end when he starts to doubt his righteousness, he still can't resist torturing his soul accomplices.

The performance here is mediocre, but I don't know how much to lay at the feet of the performer or the text. All the voices blend together into a vaguely french mush, and the actor only has like six distinct voices for a cast in the twenties. But the text also fails him, being just an endless string of interchangeable french nobility muttering about very little for incredible stretches of time. Only so much could be done.

I wanted to like this book, I finished it in hopes that, at any moment, the legendary Romance would kick in. But at it's base, the Count of Monte Cristo is less a tale of pitiless vengeance than it is a story about what you can do with infinite money and endless time. It's all too easy for the Count, which makes it all too dull for us.

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Wheels Spun

Revisado: 02-26-18

It's difficult to stay patient with the Rivers of London series. Ben Aaronovitch's Midnight Riot was such an amazing yarn of mystery, practical magic, and simmering mythology that it impressed me enough to read through five more of these books

And not one of them comes close to the original. Aaronovitch's unhealthy obsession with the Faceless Man as a sort of Voldemort analogous enemy ate the soul of the series and weighs it down like an albatross. In a series that should be so much grander than it is, his barely present villain barely even registers as boring, much less intimidating.

Kobna Holdbrook-Smith continues to elevate these books far above the words on the page. A voice actor so goddamn talented that a conversation between Peter, Seawall, and Nightengale sounds like a conversation between three seperate actors. It's incredible, but even he seems to have trouble injecting life into a script that, ultimately, goes no where, serves no purpose, and ends on yet another 'Better Luck Next Time'

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The Most Important Self-Help Book Available

Revisado: 11-30-17

While the book stumbles a bit in it's opening chapter trying to justify it's attention-grabbing title, the rest of the book is, without hyperbole, life changing.

This is the most even handed book I've ever read. It reminds us that we're mediocre, fallible, not unique, and born to suffer pains and humiliations our entire life. That that is not a glitch, but a feature in human existence. It would have been easy to have been abusive, but it's measured with humor and kindness and a shocking amount of gentleness.

It is a book about being told harsh truths. That you are not uniquely talented. That the things you believe are the product of an imperfect mind imperfectly interpreting events. That society has made you entitled and your entitlement is making you depressed. And, most painfully of all, that you can fix it.

You will die, says the book in it's last chapter. So what are you afraid of?

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I Want Complete, Creative Control

Revisado: 08-01-17

While the text has a tendency to ramble, and it's not terribly friendly to people who don't already know their wrestling terminology, it's still a magnificent story about failure. The Death of WCW is a legacy of incompotence, ego, stupidity, and more money than most people will ever see. It reminds us that we're only a year away from ruin or success, and to make our changes while times are good.

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You met me in a strange time in my life.

Revisado: 07-07-17

The Disaster Artist is difficult to describe. In the Broadest sense, it's about what you can do when you have litterally infinite money and no idea how to stop yourself. It's also about broken people, and the connections they try to form when that Broken-ness is what makes them unique and interesting. The fact that it's all wrapped into the production of the strangest, most personal film in our modern canon is almost secondary to the story about two men trying to chase a dream. There's precious little post-script, no answers, and no way out really, it is what it is, a slice of the strangest time in a normal mans life when he met someone utterly extraordinary.

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