Matt Reviews Things

His Father’s Son – Bentley Little

matt — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 01:47:37 +0000

I’ve read most of Bentley Little’s horror novels, and they’ve been pretty consistent in what they offer. Start with an interesting idea; race onward in an inventive, typically gory, fashion; arrive at a resolution that doesn’t really live up to the rest of the book, but the ride was so fun you’re okay with that. A typical Bentley Little novel involves something supernatural, and lives in a world that isn’t quite like the real one.

With His Father’s Son, Little makes his first foray into “the real world” in a novel — it’s basically a psychological study of an ordinary man and the way his life spins out of control after a shocking confession from his dying father.

What I liked:

The setup, up until the father’s confession in the hospital, was fairly excellent, and could’ve been the launch of a great book. Still could be, I guess — but it’s just not this one.

What I didn’t like:

Just about everything from that point forward. Characters react to events and undergo changes that are in no way believable. Much of the book’s action depends on what must be some of the most incompetent police forces ever put to paper (the author acknowledges this briefly via one character, then just continues on with it). The book’s resolution is not just unbelievable, it’s fairly insulting to the reader who has dutifully tread through the book to reach it.

Needless to say, I can’t really recommend this book. I do recommend the author, though, so I’ll link below to a few of his better works. If you like any of those, you’ll likely enjoy all of his books except this one. Here’s to hoping he returns to form the next time out.

The Ignored (Mass Market Paperback)
by Bentley Little
ISBN: 0451192583

Price: USD 7.99
66 used & new available from USD 0.10

| 3.5 | 81

The Walking (Paperback)
by Bentley Little
ISBN: 0451201744

Price: —
150 used & new available from USD 0.10

| 3.5 | 72

The Lost Symbol – Dan Brown

matt — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 03:08:22 +0000

With The Lost Symbol, Dan Brown supplants James Patterson (*) as king of what I call the “popcorn books” — books that work best when read straight through in as few sittings as possible, with no reflection on what’s come before as you plow ahead. Whether you’ll like the book or not depends on how willing you are to do that, I guess.

(*) – Well, Brown supplants Patterson on a “quality of book” basis. With Brown’s extended hiatus and Patterson’s co-author book factory pumping out 6 books a year, he’ll never catch him in quantity.

If you’ve read The DaVinci Code or Angels And Demons, then you can guess the outline of the plot — Robert Langdon is called to a famous landmark, something bad happens, and he’s forced into a race against time to solve ancient riddles, accompanied by a love interest. The setting is Washington D.C. this time, and in a happy-enough change of pace, his love interest is actually age-appropriate.

As I said before, this book works best if you plow straight on through without reflection. Brown makes this easy to do, with his style of ending every single chapter on some sort of cliffhanger. In a way it’s like you are in your own thriller — don’t slow down, don’t look back, or the glaring plot holes will catch up with you and dampen your enjoyment of the whole thing.

Having said that, I have a few things about the book to get off my chest. I’ll put a spoiler-barrier on it for you, so you can skip it if you don’t want to know (and I’ll try to be a little vague, at least)…

Move mouse over to view

Around page 100 there’s a sequence where two computer types, one supposedly a sophisticated “hacker,” are trying to find the origin of an IP address (the numeric “address” of a device on the Internet). Just suffice to say — some of the stuff they say is just made up, and some of the things they are boggled by are very simple, routine safety measures. You might not notice if you aren’t an Internet professional, but trust me that none of it is realistic at all.

Of course, you don’t need to be an Internet professional to guess that the highly protected CIA database in question wouldn’t have magically given them the document that spurred their interest to begin with. And you just need to have a positive number for your IQ to know that if the CIA had the name/address of someone who was trying to break in to one of their computers, they would most certainly not call him up on the phone and ask him why he’s doing it. I mean, c’mon, did Brown’s teenage nephew ghostwrite this passage?

Other things that really bugged me: for such a smart guy, Langdon sure does fall for the same damn trick by the same damn person pretty easily the second time. Also, after spending the whole book establishing you need two parts of the sacred artifact to decode its secret, there’s a long time when none of the protagonists seem to realize that their “solution” only utilizes one of the parts.

Hmm, outside of the spoiler tags, lemme just say — when the action stops at the end, if you get bored with the exposition that goes on for 30-50 more pages, you can stop at any time. You won’t miss any big revelations.

Anyway, for all my ranting above, I do think this is a decent book, albeit #3 in the Robert Langdon series both chronologically and in quality. If you are a fan of the first two books, then I think you’ll like this one just fine. If you read and didn’t like either of those, well — why are you even reading this review? If you’re that one person left who is completely new to the series, then I recommend you start with Angels And Demons and continue on if you like that.

The Lost Symbol (Robert Langdon, No. 3) (Hardcover)
by Dan Brown
ISBN: 0385504225

Price: USD 17.97
6908 used & new available from USD 0.99

| 3 | 2562

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Find more by Dan Brown at Amazon.com.

Kauai – Adventures

matt — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 01:50:25 +0000

I recently returned from a vacation on Kauai, one of the islands of Hawaii. I’ll be doing a series of posts reviewing the places we went and the things we did, to help out the next person who comes along trying to Google them, as I had before we left. :) Today, it’s the various “adventures” we went on.

Ziplining

Our first excursion was on the ziplining course of Kauai Backcountry Adventures. The course is made up of 7 lines, which criss-cross a mountainside as you descend into the valley below.

The tour starts back at their warehouse home, where you are weighed (discreetly) to make sure you fall within the safe range (too light and you’ll get stuck in the middle; too heavy, and…). After that you’re given your body harness and a helmet, and you head out and up the mountain for about a 20 minute trip in one of their 6-wheel drive converted Swiss military vehicles, being entertained the whole time by one of your 3 guides.

Upon arrival you get the full safety talk (99% of the game is simply not putting your hands on the line itself as you are zipping down it) and then you tackle what they call their “bunny slope” — a short, relatively level first line on the hillside, to give you an introduction to zipping.

From there, you climb up some stairs onto a small platform, and leap off across the valley, 270 feet above the ground. The next few lines are lower but longer, and the last two are relatively tame — they call them the freestyle lines, where you are free to zip backwards, or spin, or try something else.

Our trip’s guides, Azure and Tim, kept us safe and entertained throughout the experience. The ride down the line was very smooth, and at no point did I feel unsafe, allowing me to enjoy all the awesome scenery.

The afternoon finishes up with a picnic lunch and a dip in a swimming hole, if you’re in to really cold water. Then it’s back in the vehicle to be returned to their warehouse.

I highly recommend both ziplining, and Kauai Backcountry Adventures.

Tubing

We liked the company so much, in fact, that several days later we went back for their other activity, a trip down the same hillside in a water tube, through the irrigation canals dug long ago for the sugar cane plantations.

Once again you start in their 6-wheel drive vehicle, being taken to the top of the hill. You make a brief stop along the way to look at some scenery, then you arrive, get a brief safety demo, and get in the water.

You spend about an hour making your way down the canals at 4-5 miles per hour, passing through 5 tunnels along the way (you’re provided a helmet with a miner’s lamp on it so you can see). It’s a nice, lazy way to spend the afternoon having a few thrills in fairly complete safety (it’s not exactly whitewater rafting).

Once again the trip ends with a picnic lunch and some more swimming if you’re interested, and then it’s in the vehicle and back to your car.

Neither of these activities are particularly cheap — not much is, on Kauai — but I’d have to say that this isn’t as good a value as the ziplining trip is. But if ziplining is too much thrill for you, the water tubing makes for a fun time, too.

Powered Hanggliding

Perhaps the craziest thing we did was take a 60 minute flight on powered hanggliders (also called ultralights, or “trikes”) with the crew at Birds In Paradise.

Powered hanggliding is just what it sounds like — it’s a hangglider with a motor to allow you to maintain altitude and increase your speed. It’s similar to riding a motorcycle, except you’re in the sky and can move in an extra dimension. It’s an interesting feeling, looking beside yourself and seeing nothing but air, 6000+ feet down to the ground.

A lot of it depends on your personal thoughts about heights, but I found the journey to be progressively less terrifying, starting with looking straight ahead for the first 5-10 minutes, and ending with looking all around and enjoying the scenery, as I was steering the glider at the end.

Yep, steering. The folks at Birds In Paradise maintain that it’s not a sightseeing flight — it’s a pilot lesson. They won’t make you do it, but the point is to get you up there and let you navigate around (by holding crossbars connected to the wings, and physically moving the wings around to steer). In my case, the pilot of my trike was taking pictures with a handheld camera as part of the picture package we purchased, so for long periods of time he had both hands on the camera and was looking down, while I navigated. Like just being up there itself, I found that this got less terrifying the more I did it. :)

The ride itself was fairly smooth, and not too noisy. The bumps were about the same as you’d get in your average commercial flight, although you feel a bit more exposed when they happen on the trike. It’s also pretty cold up there, and you’ll definitely need the wind shield on the helmet they provide you.

This activity was the priciest thing we did on Kauai, and I wouldn’t make it a weekly activity, but as a probable once-in-a-lifetime event, it was well more than worth it. Again, I’d highly recommend both the activity and Birds In Paradise.

G.I. Joe: The Rise Of Cobra

matt — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 19:55:49 +0000

Let’s face it: you probably already know if you want to see this film or not. Go with your first instinct.

End of review.

Oh, you’re still here? Okay, here’s something else — if you’re a child of the 80s and you hated what they did with Transformers, then skip this movie. If you were at least okay with that, then see this movie.

If you’re not a childhood G.I. Joe fan but you want some mindless fun and you promise not to think over the plot too deeply afterward, then, see this movie. If you can’t make that promise, then you should probably skip it.

As for me, I had fun enough with it. I set my expectations fairly low, and it met them, while being a reasonable amount of fun in the process. The weaponry was suitably futuristic, the acting was satisfyingly over-the-top, and they threw in the destruction of a world icon — I love disaster movies, so that was right up my alley.

My chief complaint is that for a movie that even by genre standards is shameless in its setting up for a sequel, they dispensed with some classic characters in fairly cavalier fashion (though I suspect at least one will be making an improbable return from the dead).

On a scale of 1 to 10 “Yo, Joes!” I’d give it 7, which is 6 more than the movie gives us.

G.I. Joe: Above & Beyond
Price: USD 7.99

80 used & new available from USD 0.10

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
Price: USD 7.99

85 used & new available from USD 0.10

G.I. Joe Comics & Books

The Birthing House – Christopher Ransom

matt — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 17:25:57 +0000

The Birthing House is the debut horror novel from Christopher Ransom, a writer whose promise shines through about the first two-thirds of the book, after which it falls apart a bit.

The setup is compelling — let me just quote from the inside jacket copy:

Conrad and Joanna Harrison, a young couple from Los Angeles, attempt to save their marriage by leaving the pressures of the city to start anew in a quiet, rural setting. They buy a Victorian mansion that once served as a haven for unwed mothers, called a birthing house. One day, when Joanna is away, the previous owner visits Conrad to bequeath a vital piece of the house’s historic heritage, a photo album that he claims “belongs to the house.” Thumbing through the old, sepia-colored photographs of midwives and fearful, unhappily pregnant girls in their starched, nineteenth-century dresses, Conrad is suddenly chilled to the bone: Staring back at him with a countenance of hatred and rage is the images of his own wife….

The book sets all of the above into motion beautifully, separating Joanna from Conrad and introducing other characters to interact with him and send the story in different directions. However, this plot device soon becomes the books Achilles’ heel. Plot strands go off in different directions and don’t really meet up at the end, or even get resolved satisfactorily on their own.

If you haven’t read the book and you like surprises, steer clear of the spoilers below, covered in black. Or, mouse over the block to read them.

Move mouse over to view

The first disappointment is when the intriguing plot device that is the photo album gets promptly thrown into a fire and burned, never to return. The relationship between Conrad and Joanna, as well as the actual whereabouts of Joanna herself at times, is pretty inconsistent. And not in a “life has its ups and downs,” but more of a “bending things to fit the plot” way.

On a less spoiler-ish level, I will just say that the ending takes the delicate balance of psychological and supernatural that the book has built, and shoves it very hard to one direction, and not to good effect. I honestly don’t really know how to interpret the ending, and judging by the Amazon.com reviews, I’m not alone.

Even having said all that, Ransom is a skilled and imaginative writer. At only around 300 pages, you can read this book straight through and hang on every page. It’s only after you finish, when you look back, that the inconsistencies become more jarring.

Overall, I find The Birthing House to be a worthy read. I recommend grabbing it at your local library or waiting for the paperback — if Ransom goes on to become a megastar, you can always complete your hardcover collection later at your local Half Price Books or the like.

Despite this book’s flaws, I think that Christopher Ransom has a chance to be the Clive Barker to Joe Hill’s Stephen King for this new generation of horror writers. Whether he’ll fulfill that promise remains to be seen — I hope to find that his next book delivers from start to finish.

The Birthing House (Hardcover)
by Christopher Ransom
ISBN: 0312385846

Price: USD 18.99
131 used & new available from USD 0.10

| 2.5 | 100

Ponyo

matt — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 04:37:21 +0000

Ponyo is the new film by anime master Hayao Miyazaki, director of such films as Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke and Howl’s Moving Castle. It offers Miyazaki’s own unique take on the old Little Mermaid story.

The story in a nutshell involves Ponyo, a little girl who is more like a fish (the humans refer to her as a goldfish at first) than a mermaid, but nevertheless is a girl who is rescued by and falls in love with the human boy Sosuke. She becomes determined to become human and live on the land, and with a little help of some magic, she gets her wish. Her father tries his best to bring her back, there’s a magic-caused tsunami of sorts, and all sorts of hijinxs ensue.

The English voice cast in this movie is pretty phenomenal, with Matt Damon and Tina Fey as Sosuke’s parents, Liam Neeson as Ponyo’s father, and supporting roles for people such as Betty White, Lily Tomlin, and Cate Blanchett.

The key roles of Ponyo and Susuke go to Miley Cyrus’s little sister Noah (yeah, Noah), and the youngest Jonas brother, Frankie. So, clearly, Disney launched a nationwide search to find the best actors for the job (not that they don’t do fine jobs, mind you).

If you’ve seen other Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli films, you might find that this has less material directly aimed at adults. More so than most of their films, this is a pure-play kids movie. I still found it very enjoyable, however.

I must say that the funniest moment, for me, came courtesy of a small child seated in my row. When a main character is crying, worried about the fate of a loved one, and another character rattles off some ways that things could be just fine, the boy in our theatre said out loud, “[She or he] might be dead.” Out of the mouths of babes…

To wrap up, I highly recommend this movie to people with kids, any fans of Miyazaki and his Studio Ghibli production company, and anyone else looking for a light 90-minute diversion.