Just in time for a public holiday, so no work today.
I did lots of Hugo homework while I was away:
- Read Starter Villain by John Scalzi (Kindle) – better than KPS I think but not much substance
- Read The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty (Kindle) – great swashbuckling fun
- Read The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera (Kindle) – completely knocked my socks off and very likely to be my number 1 vote (haven’t read Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh yet, so final ranking may change)
- Read Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher (audio) – ticks many of the squares on a Ursula Vernon bingo card but very well done.
- Read Rose/House by Arkady Martine (audio) – a very different take on a locked room murder mystery in a haunted house
- Finished Chants of Sennar (Nintendo Switch) – didn’t quite get the perfect ending because I hadn’t properly finished translating all of the Alchemists language (I knew what all the symbols meant but hadn’t had one set of them confirmed – but still got all the people in the tower talking to each other and beat Exile)
So, I’ve got a bunch of reviews to write and still lots of reading to do (1 novel, several novellas and tons of short fiction).
I downloaded various things to watch on the plane both in advance and then making use of hotel wi-fi for the return trip.
- Final season of Discovery: Paramount’s download feature doesn’t work so I didn’t actually watch the first couple of episodes that I’d saved for the trip.
- Delicious in Dungeon: Netflix is still the streaming champion in one regard – downloading is reliable and less sensitive to shifting regions. Anyway, this show is still nuts and great fun.
- Rebel Moon Part 2: just as stupid as Part 1 but 100% a film to watch when you are trying to stay awake on a flight across timezones so you can get your body clock back in sync. Did everything just slow down weirdly because it was Zack Snyder or was that a microsleep? I’ll never know.
- X-Men 97: Disney download was fine going but regional restrictions meant I couldn’t get the next episode. So I did see an absolutely pull-out-all-the-stops amazing episode, which felt like a season finale but haven’t caught up with what happens next.
I also watched one in-flight back-of-the-headrest-tiny-tv movie which was Aquaman Part 2: Oh No Why Did They Make Another One which was very much a carefully crafted exhibition of formulaic superhero films. Impressively bad but not quite bad enough that I turned it off.
Camestros Felapton 
20 responses to “I’m back”
Welcome back, Cam!
(Quick, clean up the mess before he walks into the house!)
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I’m pretty sure that I know which episode of X-Men you mean. For my own part (trying to avoid spoilers), I found that my reaction was extremely damped down because of a conviction that the change will be reversed at some point, probably right before the actual season finale.
(I’ve avoided saying this on Bluesky because I don’t want to harsh people’s vibes.)
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It’s the X-Men and given who turned up near the end, I expect some time-travel shenanigans to restore the status quo 🙂
But still, massive fun
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Did you notice the cameo by the Watcher? In the sky just before the pre-reception fireworks, blink and you’ll miss it.
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Oh! No I didn’t. Well that’s another big hint that things aren’t going to stick (well that and X-Men continuity in general)
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I have to admit that I didn’t notice it myself, it got mentioned somewhere online.
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I watched Sucker Punch like this, on a bus, some years ago. Hell yeah!
(And yeah, glad to have you back. The one-bullet reviews are actually great. For some reason, Facebook shows me your posts very reliably, though I guess I should try to utilise the WordPress account more/better.)
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There’s a first world problem — deciding whether the blank back of the airline seat in front of you going to be more entertaining than the movie you’re currently watching on it.
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It was a tough call at times.
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Welcome back, Cam!
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Have you had a chance to get to 3 Body Problem or Fallout? (I liked the former a lot more than I was expecting to, mainly because the Netflix adaptation had actual characters instead of the book’s cardboard cutouts.)
I’m still mulling over The Saint of Bright Doors. It seems like such a…..I don’t know if smorgasbord is the right word? To me, it seemed like the narrative would almost be our world with a thin veneer of fantasy over it, and then it would veer off into something wild like that miles-long prison Fetter walked through. Then there’d be an automobile, a smartphone and an airplane to contrast to 2,500-year-old human gods who tinker with the fabric of time and space. And then once I realized who–or what, rather–was really telling the story….the book doesn’t lack for ambition, I will say that.
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Not yet. I’m still not sure whether to watch 3 Body Problem but I might give it a go. I keep hearing good things about Fallout.
I was deep into Saint of Bright Doors before I realised that it was a very Gene Wolfe sort of book. The difference (I thought) was it didn’t have a Wolfe-like narrator…and well, turns out it very much did. I really want to re-read it soon, I don’t know if it will make more sense but I suspect it will 🙂
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Just watched the first episode of Fallout and its great. Ive never played the games, so I know next to nothing about the world, but they do a terrific job of introducing it. Knocked of 3-Body-problem of my watchlistz for now (as wlel as the Star Trek, but thats also because it doesnt seem to run on any of my services and I wont subscribe to a nexrt one – and if I did it would be apple)
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Welcome back, just in time for Anzac Day, and the Great Body-Clock Adjuster In the Sky isn’t hidden behind a cloud bank. Noice!
Netflix seems curiously devoid of superhero sagas, now that Marvel and Star Wars and all that have decamped to Disney Plus. I’m not as well-versed in the MCU as many of you here. The one X-Men property that I truly, purely love is Legion. Might have to buy the DVDs.
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I still haven’t watched Legion, despite so many people recommending it. Does sound like I’d love it.
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It’s an FX production, therefore not in the MCU in sensu stricto. I must have seen it on Foxtel when we still had it.
The visuals are trippy. The plot is twisty AF. The casting & performances are incredible (Aubrey Plaza, Amber Midthunder, Jemaine Clement, Jean Smart, to name just a handful). There’s a storyline involving a young Switch (Lauren Tsai) in Season 3 that I still shiver to remember.
For me it’s the Breaking Bad of genre TV – not perfect, but one of those rare shows that’s so good it spoils you for everything else!
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Legion is/was an absolutely gem of a show!
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I thought season 1 was absolutely phenomenal, season 2 was a bit uneven but still enthralling, and season 3 is kind of a hot mess that manages to more or less wrap things up but only by forgetting a lot of what happened in season 2. The whole cast is just brilliant throughout.
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Just a small warning for Some Desperate Glory: The trigerwarnings at the begining are there for a reason. It is far from an easy read. (I respect the book but I don’t like it)
Re Starter Villain, yours is one of the more positive reviews I have read. As someone who liked KPS well enough I hope that Starter Villain doesn’t suck for me.
Since I am playing older Japanese Games at the moment (Persona and Phoenix Wright) I will not vote for the best Videogamehugo because I haven’t played one of the games (if one of them is even playable on a P4)
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Personal opinion only, but I think KPS and Starter Villain both carry a similar tone, and will be similarly enjoyable (or not, if you didn’t like one, but you said you did). Enjoyable fast reads, for me.
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