Flash Review: Magic Bites by Ilona Andrews

I know, I know! I talk a lot about Ilona Andrews. And Jim Butcher. People can say what they want about the choices, but when it comes to Urban Fantasy, authors could do a lot worse than to emulate these two. Both authors are fantastic in their fields, and in cross-genre chracterization. I mean a Wizard living in modern day Chicago with the attitude of a White Hat in the wild west and a warrior-merc living in a semi-post-apocalyptic Atlanta...who comes up with this stuff? Ilona Andrews and Jim Butcher.

So let's talk about Ilona Andrews and Magic Bites. Typically I hate talking about books I really like. Good books are like Kryptonite for a deconstruction critic. Like water to a cat I want to shake them off and start with something a little dryer that I can sink my teeth into. But, I'm finding that Flash Reviews are the perfect length to get out some good words in between the longer reviews I have planned for books like City Stained Red by Sam Sykes and other works that I need to get out of the way so I can clear my Bookshelf-O-Shame.

Magic Bites is a genre blending Urban Fantasy that teeters on the bridge of Fantasy Romance with a clawed toe that never quite passes the line. Instead, they slap at each other like toddlers until Mama Ilona tells them to get back to their side before she sicks a Vamp on them. Set in Atlanta, the story tells of a time when magic and technology are constantly at war with each other. At some point in the story's timeline, Magic came back into the world and it's constantly fighting for dominance with technology. Normal people will be walking down the street for days, hours, weeks, and then BANG! Wizards throwing fireballs at each other, were-tigers bounding around, etc.. This creates some fantastic drama because often the story becomes more complex during magic and vice versa with characters not always being what they appear to be.

The main character, Kate Daniels...Oh my god! I love Kate Daniels so much. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this character. The pacing for her background is given in spurts so short that no matter what you may think about her at any given time, you never know everything. There's a lot of pressure for female characters to go toe to toe with their male counterparts, and I just want to point out that that's crap. Not every female character has to be a role model to women everywhere, just like male characters don't have to be. It's fiction. It's escapism. But, that being he case, Kate Daniels is one kick-ass female character. Powerful in magic, a warrior with a sword as well as numerous other weapons. Kate has no problems taking out vampires on the street or drop-kicking Were-Lions. She has problems being frilly, which comes out more in the first book, but that doesn't dull some of the romance.

That being the case, Magic Bites paces the romance in between the story perfectly and kind of sets a standard that I really like in books. The main character, like I said, isn't frilly. She's a warrior, and her love interest, (who I won't mention, even though it's not really a secret,) isn't exactly a tea-cozy either. Instead of forcing an awkward romance, Andrews perfects her characters by playing each character to their strengths. Their romance plays out in their love of battle, in snarky comments and their knowledge of each others buttons and how to play to them. What I mean, is that while the romance is there, they don't force it down your throat like some other books...*Cough* Twilight *Cough*

Anyway, enough Rant. Magic Bites main story is that Kate's mentor died and it's up to her, a loner who doesn't really mix well with magic folk or law enforcement, to find out who killed him and why. It's the first in series by Ilona Andrews, with several spin offs and a series that is actually still going. Get hooked and be ready for gods, monsters, Vampires, were-creatures of all size and specifications, and a sword that just can't be stopped. I give Magic Bites five out of five every dang time

Flash Review: The Spirit Thief by Rachel Aaron/Bach

The nice thing about reviewing books is that you get to see how far authors have come. One of the most interesting things is finding out that authors aren't who they say they are. Nothing nefarious, but it was super interesting to find out that J.K. Rowling was writing under a pseudonym, though not surprising considering her first, "Adult" novel tanked in comparison to the Harry Potter books. I hear a lot of grumblings about that. The fact that her success skyrocketed by writing under a man's name wasn't lost on a lot of people out there. I won't get into that, because it has nothing to do with being a man or a woman considering she wrote under the pseudonym of J.K. Rowling in the first place because she thought boys would be more likely to read a book written by a genderless writer than as Joanne Rowling. The fact that you can look up and see that she doesn't actually have a middle name is the real tell and the fact that success after the first book was phenomenal means that boys really didn't care.

But, I won't be going on about Rowling in this review. I feel she goes on enough about herself for any reviewer to really need to get any words in edgewise. This time I'm going to be giving a short flash review for The Spirit Thief by Rachel Aaron. I only bring up the fact that you don't really know an author until some time has passed, because it's not until you find that they have been writing under a pseudonym that you get a real look at what makes that author tick.

For those that don't know and likely haven't gone through my previous works, I've reviewed Rachel Aaron before. She's a great author, phenomenal in her craft, and there is a second series out there that I had no idea of because I didn't find out until recently that she's been writing as Rachel Bach as well. It shouldn't be surprising. Plenty of authors do it, Stephen King had his own foray into pseudonyms, as well as Erin Hunter who is a pen name for a collaboration of authors. Nora Roberts, a very well known author wrote under the name of J.D. Robb, despite the fact that shes one of the most well known authors of fiction in the world. I blame publishers for this, The fact that you're excellent in your craft means nothing when you're stuck in a genre for the rest of your life.

Considering the fact that Aaron, who wrote a superb series of books in a fantasy genre and then made the dive into Science Fiction, (two completely different genres in my opinion,) makes the switch all the more confusing, until you realize that Aaron was secretly including elements of Science Fiction into her series the whole time and just never let it slip until the later books.

The Spirit Thief is a fantasy fiction short (no epic fantasy for this series, a dedicated reader could probably finish it in a day and a half,) about the main character, Eli Monpress and companions who travel a world where every living thing has a spirit, though not every one is awake and willing to speak with people around it. Eli and his companions begin each book with the intent of stealing something impossible, because Eli wants to have the highest bounty in the world rather than for any financial gain.

So with that being said, The Legend of Eli Monpress is a fairly good series that focuses between several characters, including the titular character, Eli Monpress, a thief who is trying to get the biggest bounty in the world. What are his motivations? Or those of his companions? Well, Aaron does an excellent job at pacing her books so that you get very minimal amounts of backstory each book. Mostly through flashbacks at the beginning of the story that focus the theme of each characters motivation for the short amount of time they are the focus, Aaron gives out just enough to make the characters come alive without dragging exposition around behind her like a a bum leg in the sand.

This, matched with the adventures of each book, none of which exactly going the way they think make Eli and his companions the lead in anti-heroes in a world where grimdark has removed any connection between being a mass murderering scumbag and being a relateable, sympathetic character who just happens to be a little bit of a jerk. The fact that each character lives their lives by singular motivations that have nothing to do with the others gives the feel of Cowboy Bebop to it. It's a common trope in fiction, usually where bounty hunting or private investigating comes about. Give just enough information about each character to give them spice and differentiate between them without making them stale too soon into the plot. It can be aggravating at the beginning of a new series, but patience is definitely a virtue when Eli Monpress is concerned.

That being the case, The Spirit Thief is no perfect book. Similar to many first in series, it suffers from the Unknown Capacity Syndrome. That is, the story begins with you not knowing everything that's going on and plugging along as though you do. Little bits are revealed as the story goes on, but the fact that characters make little comments about the others is very much like being introduced to a group of friends who have known each other for years and make little inside jokes that 1) go completely over your head, and 2) wouldn't make sense anyway if they did explain it. The nice thing about the Eli Monpress series is that Aaron doesn't even attempt to bring you in on the jokes. If you want to know what is going on with each character, then buck up and get the next book in the series. You'll get it all eventually.

The secondary problem is one that I fell into as I went further into the series, and is fairly common in a lot of series and that's that the characters are very forgettable. An early description in the series may tell you what each character looks like, but they are more identifiable by the items they carry than anything else. Eli himself is completely forgettable because the books cover may show you what he looks like, but each book begins with him being amorphous. As a thief this is all well and good, but by the end of the series try thinking of his companions as anything other than the guy with the REALLY big sword and the girl with the CREEPY cloak and you'l be a better person than I am by far. At one point she described one of the characters having black hair and I had to do mental arithmetic to remember if this was new information or if I had just imagined her having blonde hair prior to that.

Given a rating system, I'd give The Spirit Thief  4 out of 5 as a series, but only 3 out of 5 for being a stand alone novel. The fact that you have to read the entire series to know what's going on with the characters dulls the excitement of having a story, but the fact that it invites you to read the series as a whole makes it more fun than having information spoon fed you. Altogether it has the feeling of having a busy parent try to tell you bedtime story without the aid of a work of fiction. It doesn't mean they're cheap, it just means they want to give you something original. Don't worry, they love you and want to do right by you, and they'll get better with time.

Been a While

A quick word to people not familiar with my reviews.

I've been told I'm mean when I review books.  I don't think I'm mean,  I just refuse to filter myself.  When you're in middle school and high school you have to be nice.  Go along to get along, tell the teacher what they want to hear.  In college,  some people still do that.  Say the nice thing.  But reviewing books isn't like that. If you read a book you start picking things up.  What the author does more than what he doesn't.  Where his strengths are and what he does to compensate.  Does he drag the characters exposition around like a man handcuffed to a corpse? Or does he overcompensate action because he doesn't do transitions very well.  Saying, "I liked this book,  it was great," is all well and good,  but what do you get out of it without going into spoilers.  A critic who gives a bad review,  or at least an honest one,  actually read the book.  They took the time to look at it closer than even someone who tested the book for the author.  They know what works and doesn't because they went through it with a fine-toothed comb and recorded it.  A good critic can do it without being mean spirited or vulgar, but if you didn't like the book then who's feelings are you sparing? Let's not forget,  bad reviews do more to sell books than good ones do.  Someone may get a book because their buddy liked it,  but more people pick up books because they want to see if it's as bad as they say it is.  The fact that Go Set a Watchman is still on the best sellers list can attest to that.  So if I seem vulgar,  or mean,  or overly critical,  let's keep in mind,  I'm not some dick on a forum trashing books. I'm a reader response/deconstruction critic.  I'm not here to play nice.  If I didn't like it, I'd City of Bones it and never review it.  Thanks and save your filters for instagram  people.  This is the real world

Evolution of a Damage Dealer: Final Fantasy A Realm Reborn

So, I'm pretty sure that the concept of linear, Traditional, (with a capital T,) RPG is dead in the eyes of Final Fantasy and Square Enix in general, and that's okay to me. People joke a lot about the name, Final Fantasy, and how it's getting a little late for them to be keeping up the pretense of being the Final one, but I never have.

You see, I started with Final Fantasy 7, (VII for the those in the know,) and was instantly in love with the game up until I found out that you needed a memory card if you didn't plan on staying up for two weeks straight playing it, having your food pushed through a hole in the door so your parents could avoid the rank odor of unwashed teen, stale hot pockets and Mountain Dew containers that looked a little too yellow to be actual Mountain Dew. People harp on a lot of things about RPG's in general: the wait time for characters and enemies to do attacks, the loose graphics, the hours of doing things other than story playing. But, these people are the same people that think RPG is just a genre of game and not the actual acronym for the genre which is Role Playing Game, a concept that was brought about by men and women sitting around a table, taking time to make and design characters, worlds and attacks, waiting as people came up with strategies for characters and enemies and having no graphic settings but the limits of their imagination. Comparatively, waiting 5 minutes for a nice cut-scene to finish up and dialogue to finish sounds fairly lazy and complaining about it jaded and ungrateful. It's a little like a kid rolling his eyes when grandpa says he had to walk five miles to get to school, ignoring the fact that grandpa only has one foot and bad knees.

As the games progressed and became better and better, I became more and more obsessed with the game series, and while you might never catch me wearing a cute little Tonberry outfit at a convention, I do have three nifty and rather expensive tattoos permanently imprinted on my flesh to show my devotion. More to come.

But, as with everything, there does come a breaking point, even with obsessive people like me who have played every version of a game they can without spending thousands of dollars on new systems, imported Japanese versions and cards that emulate them on an unloving system, and for me, that was Final Fantasy 10, (X to the people who care.) There was no specific thing that got me to become jaded over it, but if I had to pick one, it was the Specs, or the specific way that the game forced you to use certain characters. While you were free to customize characters through a sphere grid, throwing the initial leveling system mostly out the window, this effect did not take place until later in the game, forcing you to use characters you might not particularly like. Before, in Final Fantasy 1 through 9, you had a freer range of freedom to customize characters so that they would be more or less effective against certain things. This character is an attacker, he has high health, better equipment and you place him in the front. This character has all the magic, and this one has healing magic only so I put them in the back. With Final Fantasy X, you were forced through the game to bring in specific characters to attack specific enemies. The one with the sports ball, Wakka, dumbest character in Final Fantasy history, including Quina, until Penelo, could attack airborne characters others could not. The whiny protagonist in the story could attack the wolves that were too fast for other characters to hit. The cool bad-ass with the hefty sword could kill shelled enemies, (okay, the giant anthropomorphic jaguar that had furries obsessed for years counts towards that as well, but I didn't like him.)

I think it was at this point that Final Fantasy began a steady decline. Other systems were still popularizing on the traditional role-playing game, and the big hit was waiting on the horizon: World of Warcraft. Granted, Final Fantasy XI hit the stores first, technically in Japan. But, it had two big things in it's favor. First, Warcraft was already a popular computer game and it didn't have to switch a lot of it's concepts around, just going from a society creating battle game to a single player multi-player-environmental game. In comparison, Final Fantasy had to go from a single player, customizatable game, to a multi-player-environmental game that no one was quite ready for, including developers. The second thing in World of Warcraft's favor was that Final Fantasy went on to making Final Fantasy X-2, Final Fantasy XI and Final Fantasy XII.

Now there's nothing wrong with hitching your bandwagon to new trends. That's how things stay in the limelight for so long. In my humble opinion, making X-2 was a last ditch effort to keep interest in the series while they were preparing XI for development, and it failed miserably. Trendy, art-poppy, and heavily influenced by the dying interests in Charlies Angels, Final Fantasy attempted to merge two different things, hip, trendy, youthful, girl power protagonists in revealing outfits, and the old Job Class system from games previous to Final Fantasy VI. While creating a more diverse character, it actually did the opposite, forcing gamers to finish a perfect game in order to get good Jobs, and confusing things by creating jobs with obscure attacks for different situations. Where in X you had to use different characters to kill specific enemies, in X-2 you had to hope that the character you had had the skills necessary on their list of available jobs in order to do damage properly.

Having no experience with MMORPG's at the time, I had no reference point, but, looking back on things now, I have to say that Final Fantasy XI was one of the most unfriendly systems I've ever played. Imagine you are playing a city-wide scavenger hunt and are told that you get to play all by yourself, and the grand prize is s a new car. You start out the game excited by the prospect of something rewarding, only to realize your first clue is leading you twenty miles across town. Determined, bleeding and footsore, you get there and find that three other people are there as well and that they all have the next clue and you have to do it together. You start out on the next part of your scavenger hunt, but halfway there, someone gives up and you have to go back to the last part because the clue specifically says that if you get there without four people, you won't get the next clue.

So, you go back, and wait. And wait. And wait for a few hours. Finally someone shows up and they are just as tired as you were and they say they can help but they can only stay for an hour before they have to go get some food because getting a car isn't worth starving for. So you go for the next clue, only to realize that four other teams are there and they all want that clue and only one shows up per hour and five other teams have left. Tired, and with a hungry anarchist on your team, you steal the next clue which happens to be a set of bikes and peddle away, three angry teams on your tail. But, now realizing that even through you have a means to getting somewhere and the prospect of a new car, you know not everyone is going to get that car and everyone has bikes. Instead of going off to get that car, the anarchist goes home to get food, your tank goes AFK and the other damage dealer whines for fifteen minutes before leaving and flipping you off while he goes. That was what Final Fantasy XI was like.

Rather than trying to go back to tradition, as IX did after the steampunk revolution that was VII and VIII, Final Fantasy continued on it's online road, but continued making console games, but instead creating a merging of the two, bringing more customizable concepts to the characters, but taking away the freedom of character control. In XII and XIII, you had varying degrees of lessening control over your alternate characters, putting you in control of only one character in a more free-turn setting with options to give orders like some kind of general. The problem being that the sense of control over your characters, each with their own identities was a sense of immersion. It was why Vincent Valentine was so popular, even as a secret character, because your control over the character gave you control over how involved you got into him. Final Fantasy XII and XIII were more like a game my step-siblings played when they were younger: Kessen. Instead of being in control of characters, you were a general in an army and you got to send people into battle and watch as their numbers decreased depending on their way of dealing with that particular enemy. You didn't cry or cheer for those enemies, just watched the numbers and felt a sense of accomplishment when it didn't reach zero.

Things were beginning to look a bit dim for me when XIV came out. The beginning stats were bad, everyone was hating it and the mere fact that it went back to formula, (thank you Spiderman reference,) was bad enough for me to wait around for the next one to come out. The problem is, Final Fantasy is looking to be reaching the point where Final Fantasy might no longer be a witty commentary on their last chance at success and a goal on the horizon to look to and MMORPG's might be the road that they take, skipping and singing merrily along to get there.

But, with the wait for the next Final Fantasy game looking further and further away, and tattoos being rather pricey to get in the meantime, I decided it was time to try out Final Fantasy XIV A Realm Reborn, and see if the hubbub had subsided. Boy, was I happy to try it out. Not only is the game more user friendly than XI was, not only is the Class and Job system more relaxed, not only can you get a mount fairly on, but also, rather than take an RPG and force it into the confines of an MMORPG, they did the opposite. What does this mean? Rather than being fun, but kind of aimless with a storyline buried under random quest-lines and meaningless characters, (like WoW,) Final Fantasy XIV has taken the storyline and pushed it to the forefront, a little more like Everquest, which I only played once...for a day. The storyline is central to the playing mechanics, many of which you can only unlock by playing the main game. But, rather than being taxing like XI was, the game play is more relaxed. While I don't really remember hearing anything about dungeons in XI, having not played far enough to care, XIV takes the WoW route of including a duty finder to get quests, and even a random daily roulette for high leveled characters to get Tomes that can be traded in for high level equipment, encouraging people to continue playing even after the main quest-line ends at level 50, the level cap as of yet for the game.

Now, the game is still progressing, with new patches planned out and new job and class mods coming out soon, which is hopeful as my little character, Eldrich Forceus, wants desperately to be a Ninja one day. The thing I like most about the game is that not only is the game more user friendly, but it's also more friendly gamer on gamer and I think that has a lot to do with social media. Groups in game are posting Facebook pages for their friends and accepting adds more lucratively, (houses aren't cheap after all, and Chocobo Stables are looking to be expensive as well.) I see at least four or five invites per day for people to join groups with words like, "relaxed playing," and "fun times had by all," in the wording, and there isn't a day that goes by that someone I follow on tumblr posts a picture of something XIV related, even on their NSFW pages. Go look it up if you don't know what it means, but reader beware.

So, going back to my earlier statement, people make a lot of jokes about Final Fantasy and it's 14 or so final times, but I don't. Things have been rough on the journey through Gaia, Cocoon, Eorzea and it's many other incarnations, but it's been fun. I can always count on an engineer named Cid to save the day. There are always beautiful landscapes to look in on, even if there is that damned coconut sound every time I walk from place to place. And Eldrich Forceus is always ready to join a dungeon party and do some damage dealing, trusty spear in hand ready to make a few tomes. It doesn't seem as worrisome when the fantasy has an end in sight if it's looking as good as XIV does.

And, if all else fails, I've always got IX on my PS Vita and that never disappoints.

On Writing: The Problem with Sympathetic Characters

There's a problem with selective and omniscient Third Person, and that's that it creates too many sympathetic characters in the story and not enough conflict. But, Jacob, you might be thinking, when two people think they are in the right isn't that the very definition of conflict? Probably, but the fact is that it creates very confusing character dynamics.

There's nothing wrong with it, per se, but the fact is that when you refuse to have a true antagonist beyond a hive mind or group dynamic, there's a hard time for the reader to focus on who they are supposed to root for. I'm going to use a series that I have just finished re-reading, but not actually mention what book series it is. For two reasons, 1) I've already picked on it a few times and it really is a good book, and 2) because it carries over to a lot of other book series. That series is The Demon Cycle by Peter V. Brett

The first book begins with three main protagonists, not too bad, and an amorphous set of bad guys. At one point one of the characters is betrayed by his companion and an antagonist is created. Perfect. But, then that antagonist is added to the set of three from the first book and given a back-story to make him out to be a man of honor doing what he believes is right to save the world. Great, now we have four protagonists and an amorphous group of bad guys that are little more than beasts. Well, during the second book, the fourth protagonists wife is introduced as a rather bad person, so she is more of an antagonist, right? No, during the third book, the author focuses on how she is doing what she is doing out of love and honor and that she is actually a good person, too, despite the shady way she goes about it. So what do we do?

Well I still hate his wife. I still disagree with her husbands methods, and one of the protagonists is kind of a jerk, too, so I think I don't like him as well. Now the book has an amorphous set of bad guys who are supposed to be a bad guy, a ruler who is doing the right thing for the right reasons but in a rather despicable way, and a wife who is conniving and vicious but truly loves her husband. Who are we supposed to be rooting against again?

With the same problem as having too many perspectives, when you have too many sympathetic "villains" you disperse whatever conflict you might have among the characters of the book until in the end you have no conflict at all and you begin to wonder, "Why are these people fighting each other?" It's less evident for these characters because the reader can see how the problems started but as the reader you begin to wonder why these problems are coming along. Who started this problem and why aren't they talking? They talk about everything else...at length...but nobody talks among themselves.

Where is the line in the sand drawn for books now. Plot driven books in the past, the ones that were bread and butter for me growing up, always had the clearly defined antagonist. The dragon that stole the mountain. The Wizard who kidnapped the Princess. The Emperor who was running things all along. Now, with character driven stories, everyone has to be sympathetic and it leaves me wondering, are there any bad guys left in the world?

Room with a View

What do you do when you fall so far behind? Honestly, this is a question I have no answer for. It is the one I pose because I don't believe there is an answer, and therefore it will not be the smart-ass query I pose this week. So, honestly, what do you do when you need to catch up?

There is no room for books on my main and secondary bookshelf, at least not for books. My cat, Sabin Rene Figaro Chavez Moore has found space enough to stare at me wide eyed and accusingly from time to time, but as far as authors and books, my main shelf has found its tenants and the place seems to be rent control. Jim Butcher has the top floor mostly to himself, though Rachel Aaron and Illona Andrews have stubbornly kept to their shared condo despite the, quote, unquote, misogyny from the former. Brom, on the other hand, has been caught sleeping in the penthouse staircase with a rolled duffle and a pack full of art supplies and no matter how many times we kick him out, or how many times we change the locks, he still somehow finds his way up there every 3rd Wednesday.

The second floor, though crowded, is a mystical sort of place full of pagans, idolaters and shapeshifters. Lev Grossman and Neil Gaiman are on good terms as far as neighbors go on the corner end of things while Thomas Sniegoski and Carrie Vaughn are quite chummy with Mark Zicree while he and his constant revolving door of roommates discuss the end of the world. And, right in the middle, having bought at least three different rooms all for herself, (and the massive amounts of parties she has to celebrate her success,) J. K. Rowling sits like a queen at throne in her contentment.

But, if my main shelf is like rent control condo's then my secondary shelf is more like a hostel. Well traveled, a little seedier than a hotel, and full of people who keep coming back because it's comfortable and nobody has killed them and stolen their wallets yet. Simon Green and Terry Goodkind, Stephen King and Margaret Weiss/Tracy Hickman. This place is for the glory and the ones that came and went and came again when I wasn't quite paying attention. I love them for their tenacity, but at any point they might be replaced by one that needs the space.

In the bedroom, serving multiple purposes, is the halfway house of bookshelves, of which I can name no names. Why? Because, I don't know who they are off the top of my head, and am too lazy to pick myself and my laptop up and run in there to name a few. That shelf is where books go to die slow deaths of disuse. Their drugs are simple but extreme: New York Times Best Sellers List and A Good Read by [Endorsement]. Like many famous people who visit these places, they were referred to by someone else famous, maybe even someone who can handle their vices like Stephen King or Ursula k. Le Guin, but didn't quite catch the mark.

Once a week I would go out, less frequently these days, and go to the bookstore, a little place right down the street that no longer exists in reality, and pick out three or four books. I would give each a turn, and 7 times out of 10 it would pan out well and I'd have another spot open for rent. These days, all but the very lucky have been moved directly to the halfway house in my room, next to my bed, in it's place of shame where they are set aside but not quite forgotten in all but names...I should light a candle for them, maybe.

Now it has been several months since I have gone book shopping. Under the guise of waiting for good books to catch up, but really just trying to find the time to read, and not just the occasional audiobook, I have gone without for too long. Where do I go from here?

I could, in all fairness, pick up a book in my favorite, still running series. Perhaps try to find some space for Butcher to expand or maybe one of my less needy tenants in the main building. Or, I could always check out the hostel and see what those workhorses like Green or Kadrey are working on. The fear, and the excitement comes in the same flavor, though less severe in consequence, as Russian Roulette. Will it be the safe click of a good book that I collect, or will it be the last heat and pressure I hear of a dud before that bullet cracks my skull and I'm forced to resign myself to fate of needing a bigger halfway house to share my shame.

...and yes I know that final analogy didn't make sense. Shush!

Did J.K. Rowling Jump the Gun or the Shark

I actually really don’t like J. K. Rowling right now. Don’t get me wrong, I love the Harry Potter series. I think it’s one of the most brilliantly written, paced, and involved books of the century. Not only is it timeless because it takes place in a time out of time, but it grows with you as a reader. You don’t look at the book and think, “This book is for little kids,” you think instead that it is part of a whole with characters that grow up with you. But, at the moment that Rowling said that Harry and Hermione were meant to be together instead of her and Ron, I actually wanted to smack someone or break something.

This is what we in the world like to call a gimmick. Sales for Rowling’s books are never going to go down but the people from the older generation don’t need to get it anymore because the book has been read. That means that in another ten years when the Harry Potter books become a part of nostalgia again, another series will be out already to take the place and Harry Potter will, in all possibility, be relegated to the bargain bin. In this case, Rowling might have jumped the gun because she made her move too soon to pick up publicity. Let me put it clearer.

Let’s say that Rowling hadn't made the introduction and ten years after the last movie, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, (2021 to be exact,) the sales from her books are starting to wane off. Three different generations have finished the series (those who read the books as they were coming out, those that watched them as the movies were coming out, and those that decided to see what all the hype was about after the movies,) and now there’s nothing left but to reread. New series have come out in the meantime, and now Harry Potter has been displaced by some nameless fantasy series of the generation. Sales are slacking because everyone who likes Harry Potter has read it already and those that haven’t have the new fantasy series to read instead. So what does Rowling do? She can’t start a new series, it’s been over ten years and the characters are grown and moved on: Pottermore kind of killed that road anyway. Well, if you’re smart, you laid out a gimmick, or you create one. Harry and Hermione were meant to be together. Honest! Go look in the books.

Well now, all the fans of the books are going to start rereading the books to find those subtle clues, and those that don’t have them anymore will need to go out and buy new copies. But, that’s not all, people who never had the inclination to read the series because they are in love with “James Dainer and the Prince of Twilight” or some junk like that, are now hearing all sorts of interesting things about this Harry Potter fellow. Well! Now sales are tripling, the market is flush with people who want those books, and what’s more, people will want to be watching those movies, too. Collecting wands and action figures and posters will become the thing to do again and not only has Rowling reinvigorated her story, but she’s bringing fantastical fiction to a new generation of readers.

Instead, Rowling has jumped the gun by three years of nostalgia for the 7^th book, and rather than reinvigorating the story, she is playing into the trend of a new generation of lesser books like Twilight, Hunger Games (which is still good, but not Harry Potter good,) and other sappy fantasy series by introducing the Love Triangle. Because, that’s what Harry Potter was never about. While Ron and Hermione had their spats, and it was always joked about that Harry and Hermione were dating, Ron was a good man and Ginny was devoted to Harry from day one. There was never anyone else and saying that you wanted to do something but didn't doesn't change the facts of reality. All of these people going around looking for evidence that Harry and Hermione are supposed to be there are going to find it. Why? Because devoted friendship and love are easily mistaken by the thin lines of romance, and the Harry Potter books, meant for young adults and up, was never about the romance. It was there from time to time but the focus of the Harry Potter books was and will always be about the trials and tribulations of a boy who was born to do great things and who lost much in the doing.

Five Problems with Jim Butcher's The Furies of Calderon - And Why it's Still Better than Almost Anything Else Out There

Things always seem brighter when we look back on them. People say things dull with age but when I look back on a good book it's always fondly. They are good friends who have kept me company over the years, shining down on me from their bookshelves. They've outlasted some relationships I've been in, the smug little jerks.

The problem, though, is in times like these where I'm creating a lull and letting more good books saturate the market, I find that I can't just sit still and not do any reading. Thus the few Second Glance reviews that I've done. None can compare, though, to trying to review one of my favorite authors of all time: Jim Butcher.

For those of you that know, Jim Butcher is the writer of The Dresden Files, an Urban Fantasy novel about a Wizard Detective living in Chicago, solving crimes and trying to survive by the skin of his teeth. Massive props to Butcher; Dresden is one of the best developed characters I've ever encountered in print and his story isn't even done yet! The plots are engaging and original. For those that know me, you know I'm not as big a fan of wandering character driven stories, but with so little known about the inner workings of the magic of The Dresden Files (each bit being divulged on a need to know basis) and new elements being introduced all the time, it actually is harder to figure out what's going on in Dresden's head, making each book into the journey that reading should be.

Now that being said, I'm not going to review The Dresden Files, it's too much work and I'd have to be dumb to even consider it with the books so far ahead. That being said, Butcher wrote another series, a less known series called The Codex Alera.

Not so much little known as actually finished and a good set of hardbacks on my shelf, The Codex Alera is the Snakes on a Plane of the literary world, in my humble opinion. You see, the story is that someone once challenged Butcher to write a story based on two completely random ideas and it was game on from there. The ideas given were Pokémon and the Roman Legion, and from these two ideas, The Codex Alera was born. The story is about a world where humans, Roman Legion based, are born with the ability to control Furies, spirits that live in every element: Earth, Air, Fire, Water, (Heart, just kidding,) Wood and Metal. These people utilize their Furies into everyday life, as well as for battle and self-defense which they utilize to defend themselves against varying other races of the world they live in.

Butcher, a master worker of fantasy, created six unique books following the lives of a family, and a boy who is born without the ability to control Furies who is caught up in a struggle to destabilize the governing body and take over the land. But, this review isn't about the book. Oh no, you have to read it to understand what a wonder it is. I'm just here to poke holes in the story, based entirely out of what I know about the series and what is given in the first book and to revel in how despite its flaws, it's still one of the best stories out there.

Those that know me, again, know how fun it is for me to poke holes in stories and wallow in flaws like a pig in mud, but the fact is, Butcher is a master storyteller, and unlike writers like Terry Goodkind or GRRM, he actually wants you to like his characters, not use their deaths as plot devices or over-exemplify every minute detail of their psyche. He's actually marvelously level-headed about the construction, but enough about that, here are the top five problems with The Furies of Calderon by Jim Butcher. And as always, there are spoilers, you have been warned.

5 - The Cursors. In the book, there are revealed, almost immediately, to be a sect in the governing body called Cursors. Think of them like CIA: They spy for the crown, take on missions of national security, as well as lead covert lives monitoring various threats. One of the main characters, Amara, starts out the story as a Cursor in training, on her final assignment before she becomes one in full. The problem in the first book is that at several spots, it's mentioned that people think that all Cursors do is deliver messages. Now, knowing the origins of the word Cursor, which also means courier, this might not seem like such a big deal, but it happens with such frequency, and there are so many misunderstandings in the first book that it seems like rather gaping flaw right out of the gate.

Why it's a problem - How long have the Cursors been active as an intelligence body? If it's been for at least eight generations, which knowing the storyline seems apt, then how is it that this information hasn't spread to the populace? Amara's teacher even makes a crack at Amara's ignorance to what they do, which means that either she is a country bumpkin who wasn't aware of their significance, or they are much better at staying hidden than would be revealed later. Tavi, the main-main character of the story marks that he thinks Cursors are just messengers for the crown and his Uncle is a full Citizen of the empire. His Aunt Isana is also highly intelligent and well read, and yet neither one of them told him the actual significance of a group of spies in the employ of his governing body? Aquitaine, a High Lord of the realm is well aware of the Cursors and what they do, which leads to think that the Legion knows as well since he is directing them, at least through a third party. This means that the information is known to be available to public consumption and therefore EVERYONE should know who they are.

This comes to play later in the book when Amara, who has the honorary title of Countess, leads a groups of soldiers, and loudly proclaims her title as a Cursor of the Crown, and not one person turns to the other and says, "Why are we following a messenger? Where's a military leader?"

Why it doesn't matter - This problem was cleared up by the end of the book and never mentioned again. Cursors, by the most part become less used as a whole and those that go around shouting out their status, (and maybe those that don't, wink-wink) have the life-span of fruit flies. No, in later books it's always hinted at that someone might be a Cursor, but never really used to imply that oh that person isn't important, they're probably just a messenger. This is good, I can't imagine that everyone rebelling against the crown is going around killing every messenger they find on the off chance it might be a Cursor. Seems like it might be a bit unfair to me.

4 - Stories Left Untold. As I've mentioned before, Jim Butcher's characters are always engaging, well thought out and have great personal depth. That's not to say that things don't fall through the cracks from time to time. The Dresden Files is a first person, narrated from the persona of Harry Dresden, so it's safe to say that all of the knowledge he holds about the world around him is what he knows and what he's told, which, while limited, gives a greater amount of surprise when things are revealed in climax. By contrast, the perspectives in The Codex Alera are split between four characters, Tavi, Amara, Isana and an ex-Cursor Fidelias. Each character has their own set of side characters at their side throughout the story, rounding out a greater cast as far as plot and diversity.

Why it's a problem - As the title of this section states, a lot of stories don't get told, and throughout the series, are never expanded on, and it's not necessarily just the main four. While Amara has her own stories about how she became a Cursor and what impressed the First Lord of Alera about her, these are mostly things that not everyone would be interested in, seeing as her life as a spy is much more entertaining and prevalent to the situation. But, stories like how Bernard came to be in the Calderon Valley, what happened to his wife and children, why Aldric ex Gladius hates the First Lord of Alera, why Fidelias betrayed the First Lord so readily, what happened to Clan Fox of the Marat and other such stories are left out entirely and never expanded on in the least. This gives a sense that these characters stories aren't important in the grand scheme of things and were mentioned to drag you in but never given thought. It's kind of "The greatest story never told" kind of thing: you vamp up a character by giving them a rich, mysterious background, but then, knowing that the character does well on their own, you decide that story doesn't need to be told at all. What was Bernard doing when Isana and her sister were in Calderon? Was he in the Legion? What did he do?

Why it doesn't matter - I imagine one day when Butcher is in a rut, or finishes The Dresden Files series on its 500th book, (crossing fingers,) he'll look back and realize he has so many stories left for the world to know and will write a few more short stories tied in. The important facts are always given more credence and it's that limited first person that gives the air that just because stories aren't told, doesn't mean that they were that rich to begin with. The part that you have to remember is that the stories told from the main four characters are the ones that matter to the story, everyone else there is a bit part being played on a wire by Jim Butcher's nimble fingers.

3 - No Real Sense of Urgency - Oh no, I cut my finger all over a piece of paper and I'm bleeding to death! No, wait, it's just a paper cut and I have a napkin right here. I'm okay, now. Oh no! I stubbed by toe on a coffee table, I'm sure I broke it because it hurts like hell and I can't walk. Nope, just fine, just a stub and now I can walk. Argh! I crashed my car and flew through the wind- nope that was just a dream I had, nothing to worry about. These things are all easily solvable problems that come up in a frightened moment of exposition and are cheap glamor's writers use to convince you that a hopeless cause is hopeless only to have it come out alright in the end. A good writer might use it once, like the battle of Helm's Deep seemingly hopeless on that final ride, only to have Gandalf show up with Riders of Rohan. When it gets over-used, though, it dispels all sense of urgency and makes it seem like the author has a case of hypochondriasis.

Why it's a problem - One of the most notable of this is a system of events that happens throughout the book in the perspective of Amara. She is worried that she will be ignored by the local count unless she has a witness to the crime being committed in the Valley. She finds two, but one doesn't remember and the other is a child. She decides the child will have to do but she loses him. She decides the other will have to do, but he warns her that the Count is a grumpy jerk, but when they get there and are being abused by a subordinate, the Count steps in and without any evidence of proof, goes into full tilt, agreeing to help them no matter what. The count is injured and the subordinate put in charge and they are captured. They are rescued by other loyal members of the Garrison. Without someone of equal rank to the injured Count, they can't deploy the units. Oh, but Amara has an honorary title. The knight commander won't take orders from a woman, oops, challenge him and he'll step to the line. These things are all given a lot of credence as important parts of the book, but without any kind of actual threat beyond a timetable in place, it takes away the urgency of the story and makes it hard to believe that any of these problems are actual hurdles to be leapt. If you're going to set up a situation where all hope seems lost, there has to be a situation where things seem to be dire.

Why it doesn't matter - It does matter. This is one problem that Butcher never quite fixes and a lot of books fault with on their own. You need to have a sense of urgency to a bad situation. If things look lost and you are constantly coming in to save the day at the last second then what does your reader have to be on the edge of their seats for. It's a bit of a Doctor Who problem, something that I've been talking with a friend about. Yes the earth is in constant peril, and yes he has to save the day from time to time, but when you get a new Doctor every time the old one dies and he has a significantly different personality for every regeneration, then what is the actual fear of threat? What is learned when something is handed to you without you ever having to work for it? There is none, but in my opinion, very few writers are willing to put their characters through hell for the benefit of learning something important about how things have to work, and those that are, are more interested in making their characters suffer than having them learn and grow.

2 - The Main Character as a Source of Exposition. I have a tender spot in my heart for cripples and bastards and broken things. Well, I don't, George R.R. Martin does, which probably explains why no matter what happens, they’re usually the ones to come out better off than everyone else in his books. There's likely a good reason for it too, for besides being entirely too cruel even by his standards for him to torture and kill them, they are an excellent source of smooth exposition. Children and foreigners are as well, but there's no smoother way of giving away information about the world than from someone who feels like an outsider in it. Tavi, the Main character of the series, starts and ends the story as a source of said exposition, because he has no ability to use Fury Crafting, the main source of entitlement in the realm. Forget money, it hardly ever comes into play, forget birth because some people of non-noble birth are raised higher than others. Crafting is how the people of Alera judge others. It is the power they rule by. Tavi, having none of his own, is constantly being played out as the source of information because he envies it, is jealous of it, and is a source of commentary for the way that the world works.

Why it's a problem - For one reason, and one reason only, it practically neuters Tavi as an action oriented character. In later books, Tavi learns to offset his Furyless state with swordsmanship, self-defense and a calm rational mind. But, in the beginning, almost all he can do is run and crawl and tell people how bad he has it because of the way the world works. While this does make the transition into the world of Alera smoother, you practically go into the world knowing nothing about anything until Tavi says what it does. For instance, you learn the weaknesses of Earth, Wind and Wood Furies long before you ever have a clear idea of what a Fury actually is, and it isn't until Tavi is introduced to show what he can't do that you learn what others can. The problem is that it makes Tavi less of an interesting main character who is only spouting out the rules to the game and harder to transition him into the action oriented character he would become later.

Why it doesn't matter - Tavi's lack of interesting qualities are offset by the times that he learns about other things in the world from the perspective of an outsider. When he's learning the ways of the Marat people, a people his own culture has been at war at for centuries, it opens up relations for them later on and even changes the course of events in the first book. As an outsider to both his culture and others, he makes a rather nifty ambassador and creates a lot of melding between their worlds. The addition to this is that there are three other characters in the book that are more action oriented who already know the rules of the world that can spend more time doing things other than exposition. Amara, for one, spends very little time talking about how politics work, she just does things. Isana has her own problems to deal with in the book and Fidelias is a main source of aggravation. The point is that the story changes perspectives so often, that if you like one character over the other, as you will, you are only human after all, the ones you don't like won't stay in the limelight for long.

1 - Deus ex Machina. Was it god or was it the writer that got the character out of danger at the last second? Was it devine intervention? Was it smoothly written and made sense within the context? Or was it the writer who just didn't want the character to die and made it rather choppy in the go of it? These things become easier to pick up on the closer you pay attention, and more frequently seen when you see too many. The one in Furies of Calderon is harder to pick up on, but once you see it, it can't be unseen and is more of the choppy writing parts than the smooth intervention of a loving god. Fade.

 

Why it's a problem - Fade is a simpleton slave owned by Tavi's uncle. He has a cowards brand on his face and greasy long hair. Rather than speaking a lot, he hoots when excited and moans when upset. His speech, especially in the audiobook, makes him sound mentally deficient. But despite this, he knows an old Legion trick for drinking water before bed to wake up early and warns Bernard about it, finds Bernard in a Fury storm, saves Isana from crafting herself to death saving Bernard. He tricks Tavi into taking him with him, gives him a bag full of items that helps him survive his Marat trial, and in the end reveals himself to be a warrior of some renown, besting one of the greatest swordsmen in the realm to boot. All of this might seem okay when taken into context that he is the secret protector of Tavi, but Isana, who is well aware of his secret, dreads the fact that Tavi only has Fade with him. In fact, if he is his protector, it's ridiculous how many times Tavi's life is put into danger while Fade is there pretending to be an idiot. Rather than being the outward symbol of a protector, Butcher put his greatest warrior in the form of an idiot and then refuses to utilize him. Now it could be said that Fade was pretending so that his cover wouldn't be revealed or that he was so deep in cover it took a while to get out, but the simple fact is that as a protector, Fade is awful, but as a Machina, he is forced to pull double-time to keep up.

 

Why it doesn't matter - By the end of the second book, Fade's secret is revealed to the readers and by the end of the third book his backstory is completely revealed. First books are always rough and you sometimes need that secret character running around in the background because you can't have a 15 year old boy besting everyone on nerve alone. Tavi doesn't have the skills to live out in the world of Alera on his own without furies, and as a shepherds apprentice, he doesn't have the wherewithal to fight enemies on his own. In a sense, and only slightly, Fade was preparing Tavi to utilize his brain so that he wouldn't need him. But, the truth behind it is even more likely, Butcher wanted a big reveal for Araris Valerian after all of the hinting given from the Aldric fight scenes, and who can fault someone on wanting a big reveal, no matter how little their actions in the book make sense.

 

GRRM: Words are Nipples on a Breastplate

Sorry for the extended hiatus, loyal readers. The semester is just now finishing up, and I'm finding that I have more time now for reading, and by extension, writing awful things about my betters. For the last few months I have not been idle, though, far from it. I've been listening to Roy Dotrice do awful readings of The Song of Ice and Fire books, (Let's just say that the whole Lannister Tribe had the same voice and accent except Jaime,) and finally finished A Dance with Dragons. I have to say I rather enjoyed the series. It's not my favorite by far, but that's just because the whole Political/Fantasy genre doesn't really get my motor running. That being the case, I thought that I might start off my return with one last article on George R. R. Martin's series. Seeing as it would be a gigantic waste of time and effort to go over the greats and flaws that were all five books, I thought I would just go with one small fragmented gripe I have for the series and that is Colloquialisms.

Now, for those that don't know, look it up on Wikipedia. Just kidding, it's a saying, a word, or a turn of phrase specific to language, but not written language for some reason. "Howdy" is a Midwest colloquial word. "Bless your heart" is a southern one, and doesn't mean what it implies. Colloquial terms are unique to regions, so when you go to a new state, a new region or a new country, you might hear someone say something that sounds familiar being used in a new and unique way. That's the wonderful thing about language: things change and things mean different things to different people. That being said, my biggest gripe about the Song of Ice and Fire books is that these phrases get used so often by so many people in so many different regions, (some of which are across seas,) that it seems almost ludicrous.

The ones I'm talking about are the ones referenced in the title and, to my knowledge at the moment, were used mostly in A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons: "Words are wind," and "As useful as nipples on a breastplate." For the most part it's the former being used the most, and it's not just in one location. Cersei uses the term in Kings Landing, John Snow at the Wall, Doran Martel says it in Dorn, and people in Mereen use it as well across a freaking sea. The saying is bandied around so much that it actually sounds kind of ridiculous. I get that it's a Seven Kingdoms and people saying things in other kingdoms would make it go around, but really, the people over in the free cities speak another language entirely. The breastplate comment gets used a fair share, but honestly, they couldn't have something better to reference useless things to?

It reminds me of the first time that I heard the word..."Hashtag" (shudder.) I thought someone was pulling my leg. It's a dash, a number sign, a pound sign. Why are we giving new names to things that have working names. Then I heard it more and more and the more I heard it, the more I came to hate it. Hearing GRRM use the same phrase over and over again makes me feel the same way. I love his work, I would never wish to mince words with him, but having everyone say the same thing over and over again in different parts of the world and in different languages is worse than his need to create characters for the sole purpose of killing them off.

Is Bella Swann a Bug Chaser?

This piece is a bit darker than most, but I thought that I would do a truly serious piece to make up for my absence as of late. Right at this moment I should be working on a research paper, but the thought came so strongly to my mind that I had to write this down before I forgot.

Now, for those that don't know, a Bug Chaser, is a person who actively searches out people with HIV to become infected themselves. Far be it from me to make judgments on living people rather than people on print, this sick behavior is driven by many different views, most of which stem from fear. The most prominent of the reasons I myself have heard is that it is a freeing experience: once you have HIV, you don't have to be scared that one day you might catch it. Another reason I have heard is that HIV is no longer the death sentence it used to be, and with special care and medication, people with HIV can live long, fulfilling, and even healthy lives.

These reasons are completely stupid. I would never say that they are wrong: people are human and are therefore prone to err and make stupid decisions because they are scared. What you do to yourself has effects on yourself only....only if you are a hermit and never interact with any other human being on the planet for the remainder of your life. What if you are unsafe...just once with someone that doesn't share your point of view. What if they get directly exposed by some accident. You are endangering the people you know, not only people who are not exposed, but to people that aren't. Did you know that the HIV virus can change in your system when two people with HIV expose themselves? That means that person's medication might no longer help them and their condition can worsen.

That being said, Bella Swann is a Bug Chaser. Vampirism is the fantasy equivalent of HIV. That's not to say it goes both ways, HIV is nothing like Vampirism. But in the sense, it is a death invoking bacteria that is spread through blood and destroys the immune system. In the same sense, Bella Swann seeks out vampirism because she is scared of real life. She can't relate to the people around her because she refuses to try, and the man who she loves more than anything on earth is a carrier for the disease. This combined with the fact that if Bella takes precautions, such as moving when it's apparent she isn't aging, and never stays in direct sunlight to expose her sparkly non-vampirism/humanity, she can live a long prosperous life.

So, what is the purpose of this article. Well, besides me reiterating that Stephanie Meyers is a terrible human being, be careful, because there are these kinds of people out there, and if you ever find yourself in the thrall of a sparkly vampire, find someone to hang out with or take up a musical instrument

Off With His Head! Who Killed Ned? (Spoilers)

Off with his head! The noble death, though many might dispute it these days. A quick snip, if you're strong, or have a good blade, or a guillotine, and then no more light in those pretty blue eyes. *Snick* and the crowd goes wild. A morbid thought, to be sure, but with Sean Bean's record as an actor, is anyone really surprised? Was anyone looking at Boromir...I mean poor dear Ned Stark thinking to themselves, "Now here's a character that I want to see around for a long time"? Or for those who devoutly read the book, was anyone reading about the antics of this truly noble, and for lack of a better word, idiotic man, expecting him to have a long shelf-life?

Like I said in the title, this piece of writing is heavy handed with spoilers, so if you have not read the book, I would say go out and buy it now. It took me a little over two months to finish Game of Thrones, not because it was bad. Unclean Spirits was bad, and I got through that just fine. It's not even that it's distasteful, Prince of Thorns was that, and it didn't take me that long to finish that, though I would suggest to readers out there that you include it in your list of books you should read, if only so that you can read its much better successor, King of Thorns. No, if anything, it can be said that between rules changing at work and school starting up, Game of Thrones has one sin, and that is that it can't decide if it wants to be interesting or dull. I like my cat analogy I originally intended to put in this reviews ill-fated predecessor. A good cat, you can leave the door open for and it will come and go as it will. You leave food for it, and water every so often, and it will share with you affections. You don't have to keep up after a cat, because they are self sufficient. Game of Thrones is a feral cat that got into your home when you weren't looking and refuses to leave without biting you. It's fine as long as you leave it alone: you give it space and let it do what it wants. But, every so often while you are minding your own business, it will leap off a bookshelf at you and try to claw your eyes out. Take of that what you will.

Now if you haven't seen the show either, which is remarkably similar in many ways to the original source material, then get off the internet and go get it. Philistines...

So who killed dear old Ned Stark? It seems a pretty standard question for anyone who has read the book or watched the show. Cersei gave the order for his arrest, Petyr betrayed him, (duh,) Joffery gave the order for his execution, and Illyn cut off his head. *Snick*, no more Ned and let the War of Kings begin. There has been no real debate about any of the intricacies about the manner of his death, at least none that I have seen so far. But, it is a simple thing to look at, and since I live off controversy like many people live off bread and air, I think I'll spin it a little  bit so that I can get a rise out of you, or at least get you to think...just maybe I'm right.

Cersei Lannister: Oh, how everyone loves to cast an eye on Cersei Lannister. The eldest daughter of Tywin Lannister, she was, in a sense, sold off to Robert Baratheon, to become queen, and elevate the Lannister family, as Tywin loves to do. She is neglected as Robert's wife because he never truly loves her, and raises her children to be strong, independent youths, which she later comes to regret. When Ned Stark comes to her, telling her that she knows that her children are bastards, and that she and her children should flee before Robert gets back, what exactly did he expect her to do? It's really no surprise that she takes measures to protect herself, and for good reason or not, I don't really fault her for her cunning and ingenuity, only on the murder of her husband, which nobody in the book seems to pay any mind to. When Cersei sets up the death of her husband and succession of Joffery, she has no idea what's going to happen any more than anyone else does. She thinks she has things under control: Joffery becomes king, she becomes regent, and she's one step closer to more power than anyone in her sex has any chance of having. Little does she know that she becomes as much a pawn to Joffery as she was to her husband, if not more so because Joffery has no respect for her, or her position. I would not fault Cersei Lannister for Ned Starks death. The one death I would lay at her feet would be Robert's, and only done in self-defence, no matter how distastful it is. On a side note, anyone ever notice that you can't think of her as Cersei Baratheon...go ahead, it's pretty funny actually.

Petyr Baelish: What can be said of Petyr without ruining the plot of the other books. Master of Coin for Kings Landing, he's pretty much the most manipulative man in the kingdom, though not to the outward glance. He fawns over everyone, making nice with Ned Stark at one moment and insulting him in the same breath, but the thing you have to remember about Petyr Baelish is, he tells Ned not to trust him. Early on in fact, and if memory serves me, several times. if you look to one person and that person tell you, "Hey, don't depend on me, for anything," and you do anyway, what does that say about you? Do you mistrust a snake because it bites, or a cat for it's claws? If you poke at a sleeping bear and it mauls you, do you moan over what cruel fate it was for it to happen? Let's keep in mind that Petyr loved Catelin Stark so much that he proposed to duel Ned's brother for her hand in marriage even though he was of low birth. And, low and behold, after Ned's brothers death, rather than getting another chance, she's married off to Ned instead. How on earth did Ned think that this was going to be a trustworthy man, just because he was the Hand of the King, or even just because Petyr Baelish loved his wife? Petyr is a ladder climber, at his very nature, always looking to get a little bit higher. His "betrayal" to Ned was just another step in that direction.

Joffery: The boy king, the bastard child, the usurper's usurper. There is very little given to Joffery's motivation for having Ned Stark killed on the steps of Baelor rather than sending him off to the wall. Joffery, only being 12 or 13 years old and a prince, he's plucked from a simple life of pleasure from the two most powerful families in the realm to be a king with power to do whatever he wants. In a sense, hes not much different than Robert Arryn, who when given the slightest semblance of power, has a desire to throw dwarfs from mountain-tops for fun. I have a theory of my own about why Joffery had Ned Stark killed, and it's one that I know garners scrutiny, but I don't care, because it's my opinion and I'm sticking to it. The reason I believe that Joffery had Ned killed is that the two of them are so similar. Both are high born men in a lower position within the family, Joffery being a Lannister, directly below Robert in line of succession, and Ned being the second son of the Stark lineage, not thought to do anything besides be married to some high-born lady to become his brothers bannerman one day. In a sense, both men were fostered with Jon Arryn and Robert Baratheon, this being more clear with Ned, but when you think about it, since Joffery is a bastard child born of incest, Robert isn't really his father, and the hand of the King being the voice of the king, it's hard to believe that he didn't have a hand in raising Joffery, (especially since Robert doesn't seem to have spent much time raising the boy himself, being more of a big child, himself.) Both men are lead by their better natures, honor in Ned's case, and Joffery's sadism. Those same natures are the things that lead to their deaths, (yes I know this goes a little further in the books, but I needed to make a point.) I think that Joffery saw the similarities there, and a bit of, "neither may live while the other survives," went on in the background. Even with a confession of his traitorous actions, Joffery probably knew he would never stop until the rightful king was on the throne. But while I can understand reasoning for why Joffery might have decided to play Queen of Hearts with Ned's head, I don't actually believe that he's responsible for Ned's death.

Sansa Stark: This is where we begin to get a little further into conjecture, so you'll have to bear with me for a bit, I promise it makes sense in my head. While Robert is off on his ill-fated boar hunt, Ned goes to his daughters and tells them that he is shipping them back to Winterfell for safe keeping and breaking off Sansa's engagement. Both children act to their nature, which I like about GRRM's work. Arya is worried about her sword instructions and asks if her water dancer can go with them, which is all fine and good. But, Sansa...oh Sansa. I like to think of Sansa like a mix between a magic eight ball and a bobble head. I just imagine shaking her back and forth while her head bobbles back and forth while she says things like, "But I love him!" and, "Oh it's just like in the stories!" She cries because she wants to stay with a man she's known less than a year and was responsible for the death of her pet. Now, I get it, when a boy is mean that means he likes you and all that garbage, but Sansa Stark is so starry eyed and bobble headed that she goes a step farther. She tells Cersei Lannister about the plan to move, almost right after Ned Stark told her that he knew about her incest with Jamie. This causes Cersei to step up her plans to have Robert Baratheon killed, which leads to the capture and death of Ned Stark. One could say that she's just a child, that she doesn't know any better, but that's really no excuse for patricide. I like to think that more than anyone else, Sansa Stark is responsible for Ned being killed, but not the one that is responsible for killing him, which is the main point of this article. So who killed Ned?

Eddard Stark: Ned is responsible for his own death, but possibly not for the reason that you would think so. A lot of people complain that Eddard Stark is stupid: he tells Cersei about his suspicions about her children without talking to Robert Baratheon first. I mean seriously, he had the book, he had the bastard children, and he had a strong case. Robert was his best friend and loyal confidant, you can't say that he wouldn't have given it some thought. Ned couldn't have taken a horse to find the king on his hunt? He trusts a man who wants his wife, and has forever, and tells him not to trust him. He ignores the council of the one man in the kingdom, Varys, who is being up front with him, and ignores the council of Renly Baratheon, however rash it might have been. It's no surprise that everyone thinks that he's a fool, but I say thee, nay! These things don't make a person stupid. Not going how to play slap-jack doesn't make you stupid. Moving a piece poorly in a game of chess doesn't mean you deserve to be killed. Ned Stark doesn't know how to play the game because he was never raised to be the smart game-playing lord that his brother and father were. He was just supposed to get married off to some minor lords daughter and give kids. He was raised up to that without any prompting, and in my opinion, is the same to Joffery in the fact that he has no idea what he's really doing. He's going by instinct, and just because they are wrong, doesn't mean they are stupid. What he does that is stupid, is tell his children that he's moving them prior to actually doing it. He knew that he was going into a vipers nest when he went to Kings Landing, but he still took his children with him when he went. When he feels threatened, he does the only thing he can think to do, and that's to move his daughters out of the dangerous situation he's brought them into. That is the fatherly thing to do. But here's the kicker: he tells them what he plans on doing in advance. And not a few hours before hand, but days and days ahead of what he has planned to do. Ned Stark might not have been practiced in the ways of the "Game of Thrones", but he had fifteen years to raise his children and become a good father, and he fails in the one thing that actually matters, and that is knowing his own children. Sansa is a bobble-headed, starry-eyed, Joffery groupie, and yet he tells her that he's breaking up their engagement days in advance rather than just shipping them off with his best soldiers to keep them safe. What did he think she was going to do? Did he not know her at all? Was he not listening the entire time she was going, "Oh, I love Joffery, he's so strong, and brave and handsome-" *gag*. Ned killed himself the day that he decided his honor and best judgment was better than common sense of knowing his own children. Everything else falls into place after that, because that simple fact that he said something to the one person on earth that he should have: bobble-headed Sansa Stark, Kinslayer

Film Typos - Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters

So it's been at a few weeks since I've gone to see Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters, and there is still something that has been bothering me since the credits got rolling, and that's this: Why did they make Anabeth's hair blonde?

I suppose I should backtrack a little, so lets go back to the first film, Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief. I know a lot of people were up in arms about the movie, but at the time I actually enjoyed it. Granted, once I went through the book series and saw the glaring errors, I could see what people were up in arms about, but other than that there was nothing that really effected me, and there's a good reason why. It's based off of a kids book.

These are not young adult books: the characters are all extremely young, the writing is juvenile, and the characters are all severely archetyped. Of course, the actors for the movies are all much older than the ones in the book, but that's just the way things go in movies. The whole point of going to the movies, though, was to be entertained. If you want a movie that is accurate to the book, then get a book no tape: you won't have to strain your eyes and if you get the right book then the voice actors can be quite entertaining, as well. I found the movie to be entertaining, but as far as things being wrong, it wasn't anything that couldn't be fixed by a sequel, unlike Eragon.

Now, on to the Sea of Monsters. Once again, I thought it was a pretty entertaining movie, but unlike the first time, I'd read the books, so I could see all of the errors, and to my surprise, they were pretty much the same as from the first movie. Things that would have been simple to put in were ignored, things that weren't important were forced in in their place and one spot that ABSOLUTELY SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN IN THERE WAS THERE FOR NO GOOD REASON! This wasn't so much a surprise because like I said, they did this in the first movie. The part of it that bugged me the most though, was exactly what I brought up at the beginning: Why did they make Anabeth's hair blonde?

I know that this was one of the things people were really complaining about from the first movie. The actress who played Anabeth, or at least movie-Anabeth, (I'll get into that later,) was brunette, whereas the one from the book is described as being "blonde". I use quotations because it's never clear what kind of blonde, so I always just imagine here as some kind of dark blonde, not the bottle blonde I would expect from a daughter of Aphrodite. Apparently everyone raised hell about this, and it was such a big deal that they decided to make her blonde in the second movie. And let me tell you, it looks bad. I kept having to wonder if it was the same actress this time around. But, I can get past this for the fans sake, if only for one thing...nobody mentions it...like...at all.

This movie is the epitome of a bad boyfriend, who comes over to your house and says, "hey, there's something different about you." And then just kind of goes away to hit on your hot mother. They made Anabeth blonde, and nobody makes a comment about it, even though it's kind of a glaring change. I can see people not wanting people to say anything about Chiron getting a face-lift from Bond to Ripper, but Anabeth is both the same character and a main one. They had plenty of opportunity to say something about it, but rather than do that, they just kind of ignore it, like it's some kind of boil they're too polite to notice.

I don't really see why they needed to make her blonde, and the reason is because this Anabeth isn't the book-Anabeth, but movie-Anabeth. Now, Jacob, that's absolute rubbish, you might be thinking, there's no difference between the first and the second, but there is. For whatever reason, the main plot point of the Percy Jackson books, that being Kronos, was ignored in the first book, meaning there was no underlying reason for Luke's betrayal, there was no deep backstory about Anabeth and Luke being close friends since childhood, and the Anabeth from the books was a runaway, she had spent very little time outside of the camp, and none of it was after she had gone there for the first time. The Anabeth from the movies is headstrong and knowledgeable, confident and strong, and while it isn't taken at the snail pace it was in the book, however obvious, the romance between Percy and her is more developed.

Now, you might be asking me what this has to do with anything. Well, the answer is this, because the Anabeth from the movie is so different than the one from the book, there was no reason to make any cosmetic changes to the actress for the sake of continuity. If you are going to make a movie that is loosely based off the text, then do it: go all out, make Percy a sea monster and Anabeth an incarnation of Athena, and make Grover a robot. If you make such glaring changes to the story then there is no reason for you to freak out that people are screaming for your heads that Percy isn't 12 and Anabeth isn't blonde, because you are already making changes to the things that actually matter, and every thing else...well it's just pointless pandering when compared to $)(*#(*$)(*% at the end of the movie. See, had you scared there for a second

Why: Twilight Has Filled A Niche and No One Can Fill It

This is not a good thing, mind you. I don't want anyone to read this title and go, "Oh, wow, Jacob likes Twilight, now." I have not recently suffered a blow to the head or started huffing paint...not to say that Twilight fans do any of those things. They do worse, they read the books.

There's been a meteoric rise in book-to-movie adaptations of YA novels, Young Adult books for the uninitiated, over the last few years. There has been even more in the last year since the final Twilight movie slumped, still-born and repulsive, out of the box office. For those of you out there, shaking your fist at me for being so heartless and cruel, let me remind you that Dynasty had already done a similar trope in their final hours of fame, and, as poorly received as it was back then, it hasn't gotten better with age.

Where was I? You'll have to forgive me, I could go on for hours about how awful the series is, but I simply wanted to make a point. This is not a review to cast a light on the spectacle of Twilight, because honestly, bad reviews do more for bad books than good ones, and every time I say the name of the series I can hear Stephanie Meyers' pockets filling with more ill-gotten money than a Nazi during Blitzkrieg. The point is that the series created a fandom with marketing and influence that I haven't seen since Star Wars came out with the second trilogy, with fans more obsessed than the people on Trekkies. And why is that? Who knows, it was the wrong place at the wrong time, and once that sparkly vampire was out of the box, it just kept glowing no matter how deep I buried it.

But, why is it that with all the Twilight, (cha-ching, dammit Meyers!) off brand movies coming out, none of them have been able to match the success that their predecessors have made before. I always think of it like a flight of geese: Meyers was the brain dead goose that somehow got to the head of the flock and made it easier for all of its less popular geese-cousins to follow in it's wake. Now Meyers has gotten tired and moved off to the side, and rather than a smarter goose taking the lead and getting the rest where they need to go, they've flown into the arctic, had their wings frozen and exploded in mid-air. And then someone came around and made a nasty facebook post about them.

So what did the Twilight Series do that the others just aren't getting? Well for one thing, everyone else is writing with a plot. Look at a general plot like Game of Thrones. The plot was central to the story without being the majority of it. The characters of the story revolved around the plot, and character development and conflict revolve around the characters. A good climax to the story comes along and effects the majority of the characters if not all of them, and ends with the reader wanting more. Regardless of whether you like a story-driven or character-driven book, you can all agree that a plot is important to a book. I like to think of it as a galaxy: the plot is the sun, the characters are the planets, development are the moons and the climax is a set of meteors about to destroy everything. Goofy as it sounds, it's apt for the point I'm about to make.

For Twilight, they skewed the entire galaxy, making it seem like they have a plot, but in reality, in it's place is only conflict. Rather than a plot-sun, Twilight's galaxy model revolves around conflict and little "forbidden romance" tropes to draw in readers. Think about it, the characters are in school but do they ever actually talk about school beyond the Romeo and Juliet sections Meyers forces down your throat in an attempt to sound worldly? No, she's got vampires and werewolves and a forced love triangle so weak it makes people wearing "Team Jacob" t-shirts look like people who wear "Vote Gore" buttons. Around their conflict-sun, float little character planets with no real development. 200-year-old Vampires don't really develop,  and when you try to make them it is contrived, and "Dynasty-Level-Weak". In exchange of a climactic meteor shower, a plot-shower is in it's place, spitting at the planets, hitting some, but mostly just aiming wastefully aside like a group of children spitting at someone off a balcony. They're not likely to hit you, and it's somewhat amusing to watch them try.

And that is the reason, in my opinion, that all of these other YA book-to-movie adaptations are failing, or at least not cashing in as well on the waning popularity that Twilight got. Books like Beautiful Creatures and (shudder,) City of Bones, are trying for the otherworldly romance of a "normal" protagonist and a soft-core gooey supernatural love interest. They think that this is the source of the popularity, a plot about whether they can make it or not, but in reality, 90% of Twilight is just about how wrong their relationship is and how they can make it work anyway. That's not a plot, but that's what sold Twilight, and that's why others have been failing in its wake.

So, what do we do? I know we are all getting a little tired of the YA movies coming out, and to be honest, after Percy Jackson 2.0, I just want the Hunger Games movies to be over so that I can get back to avoiding the movie theaters for awhile, at least until X-Men: Days of Future Past comes out. And, to be honest, I think that's what movies need to do: wait. Wait for the next fad so they can cash in on something moderately original and not so embarrassing. Because to be perfectly honest, if I find out they're going to try Eragon again, I might just blow a fuse and start throwing paperback copies of The Hobbit from the nearest water-tower 'til they lock me up in the looney bin.

Single Handed: Finale

As promised, this is the final part to Single Handed, both parts. I know it's a bit long, but just keep in mind that it's wrapping up two sections of a story. Not much to say about it: nobody has really had anything good or bad to say about the story up til now, so I'm just assuming it's been well received. I'm funny like that. So, without further ado, the Finale to Single Handed by Jacob Moore.

I was woken from the blackness by whispered voices. I didn’t care where I was. I was
warm, and I didn’t have a rabid wolf on me anymore, and that was all that mattered. I just laid
there for a while, enjoying not doing anything until the voices got louder and I could no longer
ignore them.
 Opening my eyes, I saw that I was in a hospital, lying on a bed in a gown too small for me.
An I.V. hung next to the bed, and considering I couldn’t feel my fingers, I bet it was on the good
stuff. Or dead: dead people probably couldn’t feel their fingers either, right? Definitely the good
stuff.
 The room wasn’t empty, of course. A female doctor was arguing with a cop who was, in
turn, waving emphatically for her to get out.
 “It’s not appropriate,” she hissed as he pushed her firmly towards the door.
 “And I told you, I don’t care. He should have a friend here when he wakes up, not some
quack!” I recognized the voice, and while I was annoyed, I couldn’t help but smile at his
presumption. “Tell me what?” I asked. The doctor zeroed in on me like a missile, but the cop took the
opportunity to give one last good shove that sent her flying through the opened door.
 Over the sound of metal and plastic crashing to the ground, Lt. Locke called out, “You
two, keeper out…or shoot her. I don’t really care which,” and he slammed the door, walking over
to the bedside. In a city full of blondes and ravens, Alex Locke was an anomaly with his flaming
red hair and freckles over his Asgard pale skin. He was friendly enough for having as touch a job
as he had, and was almost always smiling ear to ear, even now. My father had always said he’d
never be a good cop: he was too thin, frail, and friendly. I knew better. If anything, Alex was too
smart.
“Friend, huh?” I said, smiling up at him. “Stretching it a little, aren’t you?”
 “Suit yourself, boss,” Locke said, sketching out a little salute. “Don’t know why we can’t
be both.”
 “What happened, Locke?”
 Locke’s face clouded over, but he grimaced as he started. “From what we understand, the
Wolves knew your route somehow. That’s being looked into. They hijacked a snowplow and
knocked the transport van over. The plow backed out and the Wolves swarmed the area,
making it possible for Fenton to escape. One of the officers called in for backup shortly after
things started.
 “My unit was in the area. I coordinated with five others, and we circled the wagons. We
got every one of them: ten total, three injured. We had light casualties over all, but the officer
who called in for backup was killed.” “Did you get Fenton back to jail?” I asked. Locke stopped talking and frowned down at
me, “What?”
 “I just said that one of your men died and all you want to know is if some scumbag is
back in jail?”
 I scowled and attempted to straighten myself in the bed, “What was his name?”
 “How should I know?”
 “If you can tell me, I can tell you what his unit number was, how long he’s been with us,
even how often he came in with scuffed boots. I’ll know his parents, because I’ll have to call
them and arrange his funeral expenses. I have time to mourn my officer later, so don’t tell me
how to prioritize! Now answer my goddamn question, Lieutenant!”
 By the time I finished shouting, my stomach was hurting and I had to remind myself that
I’d been recently stabbed. Locke turned around for a few minutes, but recovered, angry, but
controlling himself.
 “We found Fenton in the snow plow without the keys to start it. He was half frozen and
bleeding. He’s got some new charges against him now…now what?”
I was staring at him, aghast, “How did he get in the plow? I had him cuffed to me. I
couldn’t let him get away again. What did he do?”
 Realization seemed to come to Locke, and it made his already pale skin lighter, “We
thought you knew…there was so much blood. We didn’t think anyone could go through it and
not know.”
 “I passed out when he tried filleting me, Locke. What did he do?”
 “He cut off your hand…” The words didn’t seem to register, spoken so matter-of-factly…so blunt. He was talking
again, but I couldn’t put the words together. I felt around, and sure enough, I realized that I
could feel one hand, but everything below the other wrist was numb. I pulled my arm out of the
sheets and looked. The stump was well rounded with bandages, clean linen encircling an arm
that used to be whole.
I gazed at it like a man trying to puzzle out some sort of abstract art, and hours seemed
to pass by at a time before something inside me seemed to click out of place. With a snarl, I
attacked the bandages with my remaining digits, pulling at the neat, clean, offensive linen,
ripping and tearing at it in rage.
Locke reached for me, and I shouted, pushing him backwards where he crashed into the
wall. The door opened and two uniformed cops looked in, obviously concerned. I ignored them
and finished unwrapping the bandages. The stump was well stitched, but red and angry as it
came into the light. I looked at it, and felt the piece I’d lost slip further away. I’d sacrificed my
hand…my flesh and my blood…the only thing I had in this world.
“Where’s my hand?” I asked to no one in particular.
Locke looked hurt but answered, avoiding looking at my arm, “Fenton didn’t have it, and
we couldn’t find it anywhere. I’m sorry.”
“’Sorry?” I said, glaring at the stump…my stump, refusing to look at anything else. I’d lost
my hand, and what did I have now? “Get out.”
“I don’t think you should be alone right now, Kris -” Locke started to say.
“That’s Chief Tyler, Lieutenant!” I shouted, feeling the stitches in my stomach pulling, but
I couldn’t bring myself to care. “Now get your ass out of here! Now!”Locke frowned and walked back to the door where the officers had disappeared.
Grabbing the door, Locke turned back to me and glared. “Suit yourself, boss,” he said, and
slammed the door, leaving me alone. Just me…and the price of my obsession.
***
“Let me get this straight,” Locke said, perched on the edge of my bed while I re-wrapped
my bandages, having thrown the bloody ones in the trash when I’d gotten home. “Some woman
off the street pulls a gun on you and demands you open your safe deposit box. You take her
there, give her a ring and pull a gun on her. The teller comes in to check on you, the woman
shoots her, making everyone in the bank think the one-handed guy with the gun did it,
effectively stopping your pursuit. You then attend to the teller’s wound ‘til the paramedics show
up. Did I miss anything?”
I finished wrapping the bandages and turned back to Locke. After the paramedics had
taken Anna to the hospital, cops came to question me. Recognizing me, they’d called up to
Locke who had ordered me taken home. He’d shown up ten minutes later, bright and shiny in
his uniform and not smiling at all.
“Nope, that pretty much covers it,” I said.
“Oh good, ‘cause I’m trying to get a baseline for the new and improved, retired
Kristopher Tyler, but it’s not like they make a litmus test for this.”
“Hey, I was just going to get a new coffee pot.”
Locke raised his eyebrow and looked at the mess of sludge and glass around the room,
then back at me. I shrugged. I hadn't had time to clean before he’d shown up.
“Why didn't you go after her?” Locke asked, bringing us back on topic.“You know, I remember a young punk Lieutenant getting mouthy with me after I asked a
similarly insensitive question,” I said, frowning down at him.
“That ‘punk’ is Chief now, and understands how to prioritize,” Locke said, getting off the
bed and walking towards the door.
“Then you missed the point I was trying to make,” I said. “If Fenton had escaped, he
would have killed more people, maybe even more cops. If I’d chased after that woman, the
teller, whose name is Anna, by the way, would have died, even if I had caught her. My
responsibility is always going to be towards the people I can help, Locke.”
Locke seemed to think it over for a minute before nodding and going for the doorknob.
Before he opened it, he snapped his fingers in an all too familiar manner that made me glad I no
longer had my gun in hand. “That ring she took,” Locke said, turning around. There was an eager
glint in his eyes, but otherwise, he appeared calm. “What did it look like?”
“It was a cheap knock off of my grandmother’s wedding ring,” I said. “My mother lost
the original and didn’t have the heart to tell my father. It was a plain gold band…almost man-ish.
Why?”
“No reason,” Locke said, frowning. “Missing evidence from the Wagner murders, but it’s
not your problem.”
“Welcome to my life, Locke,” I said, as he turned his back to me, opened the door, and
started out. “Sometimes things just go that way.”
Locke nodded and closed the door. I walked over to the kitchen. Everything was
connected to the ring. Fenton and now Helena both wanted it. I watched out the small, dirty picture window above the sink until all the police units drove off then walked over to the phone
and picked it off its cradle. Digging my fingernail into the seam, I cracked it open like an oyster.
Inside, where I’d removed the ringer three months ago laid a small evidence bag.
Nestled in it was a small ring with a minuscule diamond setting…a ring familiar to me since I’d
seen its owner wearing it so proudly in his youth. Just visible on the inside, dull and faded in the
fluorescent kitchen lights, read: Alex Elias Locke.

Single Handed Part 5

*Hey everyone. Didn't drop off the planet or die or anything like that. I know that I promised a whole week of Game of Thrones by GRRM, but unfortunately changes in policies at work made it so that I have to find new times to read, and with a new semester coming up, its going to become more so. I have changed things up by buying the audiobook for Game of Thrones, but as another slap to the face, the guy who does the audiobook is dull as...well he actually makes paste look interesting and watching paint dry like a worthwhile pursuit. So, to make up for my lateness, I'm going to post the next segment of Single Handed. There are only two more sections left after this, and I might combine the past a present endings into one post, just to wind things up. In the meantime, please enjoy*

Like many birds in the wild, businesses in Asgard tended to mate for life with their
locales. The First Asgard Credit Union was the perfect example. Even with the neighborhood
decline, they were still open at 9:00 AM every weekday and closed at five. Of course, they were
massively understaffed with only one teller and an elderly guard named Al who slept by the
door for most of his shift. The teller, a young woman named Anna, was busy when we entered. I flashed my keys at
her and she rushed forward when she recognized me.
 “What can I do for you, Mr. Tyler?”
 “I need to get into my safety deposit box,” I said, grabbing Helena around the waist and
pulling her close to my side where she yelped and grabbed my stump warningly. “We’re getting
engaged and I need my grandmother’s ring.”
 Anna’s look of excitement was tempered by the grimace on Helena’s scarred face and
rather than congratulate us, she simply nodded and walked over to the box vault and unlocked
it. “I’m really busy, Mr. Tyler. I’ll leave it unlocked. Just wave to me before you leave.” That said,
she walked back to her desk. I opened the door for Helena and we both walked in, shutting it
behind us.
 The room was mostly empty. A plain plastic table sat in its center. The walls around it
were etched with varying sized slots. Helena stayed by the door, her arms crossed as she
watched me walk across the room to box 289. Unlocking it, I took a box the size of an old VCR
out, and set it down on the table.
 “You haven’t told me what you want…” I said as I unlocked the box.
 “Don’t act stupid, Chief,” she said, smiling at me from her corner, “I want the ring.”
 I reached into the box and pulled out a small gold ring and tossed it across the room to
her. As soon as the ring left my hand, I reached back into the box and pulled out a little Walther
PPK handgun and pointed it at Helena, who disregarded it as she examined the ring in her hand.
 “Another fake,” she said with a sigh, a look of disappointment on her face. “You do realize
that the engagement is off now, right?” “Shame. I always thought I’d marry for looks, anyway,” I said. With my stump, I twirled
the box around so she could see the empty contents. “You must think I’m an idiot.”
 “Honestly?” she said. Taking the ring, Helena placed it on her right pinky and smiled
mockingly at me. “Okay Quick-Draw, you got me. Now what?”
 “Cops…jail…court…I figured we could do the whole song and dance.”
 “You’re forgetting something,” Helena said. “If I don’t get out of here, Graham’s going to
-”
 “I’m not worried about Graham,” I said, cutting her off and smiling. “Third floors of most
of those buildings don’t hold heat. There’s not a chance a family of four would live there. I used
to be Chief, but I was a detective for a few years. Don’t insult my intelligence.”
 For the first time, Helena seemed to falter. “Everything’s coming together,” I said, keeping
the gun trained on her as I walked around the table. “Drug dealers getting free passes from cops
made me wonder who else was getting lucky. Well…Elias Fenton seemed to be a little too slick.
It was easy enough to get him to talk: all I had to do was play dumb and flash the ring around,
and before long he was answering questions I hadn’t even thought of yet.
 “The ambush was a mystery. Why make such a big deal about freeing him just to let him
get caught again. But it made sense when my…ring…was taken. I knew it was only a matter of
time before someone tried again. And here we are.”
 “Yes,” Helena said, her smile returning. “You, me, and the lady makes three…”
 Before I could ask what she was talking about, the door opened behind her, and Anna
stood there, shocked as she looked between me, the gun, and Helena. Helena took advantage
of the situation and grabbed Anna by the hair, pulled her gun out, and shot. Shouts of panic from the lobby echoed into the vault as Helena ran out, screaming her
head off. By the time I got to Anna and started putting pressure on the wound in her stomach,
Helena was already past Al and out the door.
 “Call 911, you idiot,” I shouted at him, ignoring the gun he pointed at me. “Now!” I
looked down at Anna, who was shivering in shock, “You’re going to be fine. Hold on: help is on
the way.”