THE FORCE IS AWAKE – I HOPE YR HAPPY NOW

And now, the movie review you’ve been waiting for all this time.

[NOTE: I’ve done my best to avoid spoilers, but if you haven't seen it yet, by all means wait until you do before reading this.]

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Truly it’s hard to imagine another movie preceded by this much hype and an equivalent amount of baggage from fans who have never forgiven George Lucas for making grim prequels instead of giving them the Star Wars movies they WANTED. Plus, there was all the dithering over the fact that Disney bought Lucasfilm and declared most of the Star Wars Expanded Universe books, comics and games non-canon. Cos you know, Disney ruins everything, right?

Anyway, SW:TFA had a hell of a legacy to live up to, which makes it hard to review it like any other film – unless you’ve never cared about Star Wars, or you liked the films but not to the point of obsession, or you saw them starting with the prequels, or whatever. For myself, I’m from the original Star Wars generation where our young and impressionable lives were changed forever in 1977 by the original film. I didn't expect J.J. Abrams to duplicate that experience – that would be impossible, partly because I’m 50, and partly because part of what made the first Star Wars so amazing was that nothing like it had ever been done visually – Lucas’ team literally had to invent some of the FX techniques that made it work, or take older techniques to new levels. I knew going in that SW:TFA would have none of that – FX-wise, it would use the same techniques as the average Hollywood CGI blockbuster, albeit perhaps to better effect.

So I wasn’t expecting a life-changing experience – I was just hoping Abrams would make a decent Star Wars film that reflects the spirit of the original trilogy – i.e. a fun adventure in space with good characters.

So, with all that in mind, here’s what I have to say about SW:TFA:

1. I loved it.

2. Is it perfect? No – far from it. Plot holes abound, and Abrams and the writers go a little overboard with the fan service, while the story unnecessarily borrows select plot elements from the original trilogy and relies an awful lot on coincidence as a plot lubricant.

3. On the other hand, it’s got far better dialogue than any of the other films, and while the story follows some fairly obvious tropes, it doesn’t come across as a tired rehash.

4. That’s largely because SW:TFA is populated by an interesting new cast of likeable characters – Rey the mysterious Force-sensitive scrap collector, Finn the cowardly but good-hearted Stormtrooper, Poe Dameron the smart-ass pilot and BB-8 the plucky cute droid – to take the baton from the old hands.

5. Speaking of whom, Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher do a great job of playing convincing older versions of their respective characters. I do admit being disappointed that Leia doesn’t have as prominent a role as Han, but at least she gets more than a cameo.

6. As the new Bad Guy, Kylo Ren is no Darth Vader, but that’s a good thing. Ren has his own motivations and complications, and actually projects his own brand of menace – until the mask comes off, but even then he comes across as a character someone put some thought into.

7. All up, is it as good as the original film? Of course not. But it’s a hell of a lot of fun, which you haven't really been able to say about a Star Wars film since 1983.

8. Is it as good as the original trilogy? Let's put it this way – I can safely say this is the fourth-best film in the series. Possibly even the third-best, depending on how you feel about Return Of The Jedi.

9. Either way, it’s safe to say the series is now back on track as the fun, entertaining popcorn space-fantasy franchise it was intended to be (whether George Lucas cares to admit that or not).

BONUS TRACK: For those of you who care, while Disney disavowed the Expanded Universe stories, that didn’t stop the screenwriters from borrowing certain ideas from it. io9 has a list here if you’d like to know more, though it is of course chock full of spoilers.

SEE ALSO: This op/ed from Ars Technica on why scrapping most of the Expanded Universe was probably a good idea.

AND FINALLY: If you want to know what George Lucas thinks about SW:TFA, you can find out here.

The Force abides,

This is dF

I’M READING AS FAST AS I CAN (DECEMBER 2015 EDITION)

And that about wraps it up for 2015.

If you’d like to see a summary of my year in reading – and why WOULDN'T you, I mean it’s why yr here, right? – Goodreads has kindly provided a handy infographic here.

You may also like to know that I completed my goal of reading 60 books this year, although not by as big a margin as last year (insert Thomas Pynchon joke here). I think I’ll set the same target for 2016 – my reading pace seems more or less suited to that number, and I didn’t feel rushed this year, so why not?

So, here’s the last batch of book reports for the year.

Firebreak by Richard Stark

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The 20th Parker novel, and the first one to acknowledge the internet age, as the target for this heist is a dot-com billionaire with a stash of stolen paintings, and one of the crewmembers is Larry Lloyd, a computer whiz fresh out of jail after doing time for trying to kill the business partner that screwed him. However, most of that is beside the point, as the main complication for this heist is someone else who is hiring Russian hitmen to kill Parker, and much of the novel involves Parker sorting out that problem before focusing on the heist. There are two notable weaknesses in this one, (1) the technology bits, some of which may only make sense if you don't know how computers work, and (2) the part where we find out who is trying to kill Parker, which makes even less sense given the situation in which the characters were last seen. However, it’s fun watching Stark pile on the complications, especially at the end. Firebreak is somewhat uneven, but otherwise it’s a decent addition to the series.


The Melancholy of Mechagirl by Catherynne M. Valente

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a collection of short stories and poems, most if not all of which were written while Valente was living in Japan (which is an interesting story in and of itself). I found it in the science-fiction section, but the stories are more a blend of Japanese folklore, ghost stories and post-human surrealist cyberpunk. In literary terms, these stories echo the mythological storytelling of Neil Gaiman and the whimsically surreal lyricism of Ray Bradbury, but without copying either. The result – for me – is that many of the stories are difficult to follow, but written in such captivating language that you find yrself pushing forward with it even if you don’t fully get what’s going on. If nothing else, it’s a refreshingly different Western take on Japanese culture in SF. This is my first time reading Valente, and overall it was a good introduction and an interesting experience.


The Girl with All the Gifts by M.R. Carey

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The cover blurb alone is a great hook (“Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class. When they come for her, Sergeant Parks keeps his gun pointing at her while two of his people strap her into the wheelchair. She thinks they don't like her. She jokes that she won't bite, but they don't laugh …”). Finding out that M.R. Carey is a pen name for Mike Carey sealed the deal for me, as I’m a fan of his work on Hellblazer and his Felix Castor novels, so I was looking forward to this. And it doesn’t disappoint. I can’t say much about the story without giving away the explanation for the opening – it’s better if you don’t know in advance (and as I found out the hard way, many existing Goodreads reviews are full of spoilers, so watch out, although this is also the basis for a film coming out next year, so maybe you’ll find out soon enough). Suffice to say Carey really puts a fresh spin on this particular genre, and delivers a compelling and fairly gruesome page-turner in the bargain. If there’s a weakness, it’s that some of the main characters are a little too obvious as genre archetypes required to drive the story along (possibly as the result of Carey’s use of mythological metaphors). But Carey still manages to flesh them out as real and believable characters. And extra points for coming up with an ending I really didn’t expect.


Fatale by Jean-Patrick Manchette

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I’ve never read Jean-Patrick Manchette before, and odds are I might not have heard of him if Hollywood hadn’t recently filmed one of his novels starring Sean Penn, which prompted the re-release of that novel (The Prone Gunman) and this slim novel that reportedly ran so hard against convention that his publisher in France decided not to include it in their regular crime-fiction series. It’s also reportedly his most blatantly political book, albeit not to the point of dominating the narrative. Anyway, it’s Manchette’s take on the femme fatale genre, in which Aimée Joubert – who is moving from town to town, assuming different identities fleecing the local rich folks and leaving a trail of bodies behind her – arrives in the small port town of Bléville for what could be her biggest score … or her last. Manchette keeps it perhaps a little too tight at 90+ pages, but he works in a lot of compressed information about Aimée’s background and the corruption and small-town scandals of Bléville she seeks to exploit, to say nothing of the symbolic metaphors strewn throughout. It’s also interesting that Aimée isn’t just a plotting, sexy golddigger – she’s also a tough martial artist, which is pretty standard today but was quite pioneering in 1977 when the novel was published. A nice, short twist on the femme fatale theme.


Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

As much as I love the Star Wars films, I’ve never read the Expanded Universe books or comics (apart from Splinter Of The Mind’s Eye). The sheer volume just seemed too much to keep up with. But with the new film coming out, I was inspired to dabble, so I decided to start with this one, partly because it features Luke, Leia and Han, and partly because Timothy Zahn has been doing these for years, so I figured he might be a reliable place to start. Well … maybe not. The basic story is okay – as the New Republic struggles to establish itself in the wake of defeating Emperor Palpatine five years previously, Grand Admiral Thrawn of the Imperial Army is determined to re-establish the Empire, and gets himself a Dark Jedi to help him. But Zahn’s writing style is a little too average for my taste. And that might be okay, except he also spends too much time making references to plot points in the original trilogy – sometimes to the point of rehashing famous lines and scenes in new contexts, which comes across as too blatant an attempt at fan-service continuity. I already have another Star Wars book in the queue (not from this trilogy), so I’ll try again later, but I’m thinking maybe the Star Wars Expanded Universe isn’t for me. I don’t see myself getting the next book in the Thrawn trilogy at this stage.

Empire down,

This is dF

LISTEN TO MY LAST WORDS OF 2015

Oh good, the 2015 presidential debate transcripts are in.



[Via Eye Of The Storm]

Exitstencil,

This is dF