Rogue One

Rogue One is a worthy addition to the Star Wars universe. I just want to say that up front before I get into any details. It's a fun movie, dark at times, and it feels (at least to me) like coming home a little bit- and by that I mean revisiting the Star Wars story the right way. After last years disappointing Star Wars: The Force Awakens I wasn't sure what to expect here, and I went from indifference early on to quite a lot of interest as this movie arrived. A lot of the attraction for me is the cast of characters- it's nice to have new characters, so that this feels truly like a spin off story and not a Skywalker episode. 

Jyn Erso is awesome. I had an idea from the trailers that I would like her, and I was right. The casting of Felicity Jones was fabulous, and her and Diego Luna as Cassian Andor are top notch leads. Nothing against Daisy Ridley but I'd rather watch Jyn Erso any day than Rey from A Force Awakens. Many have mentioned the problems with Rey's character -she can do anything, she is a powerful Force user right off the bat, etc- and I agree with all of that. Here Jyn is a badass because she's had a rough life and she's not a Force user- she's just a person trying to do the right thing.

Other standouts in the cast for me are Donnie Yen as Chirrut Imwe (a Force sensitive) and Jiang Wen as Baze Malbus (a warrior who protects Chirrut)- they sort of round out the prinicpal cast along with Riz Ahmed as Bodhi Rook (an Imperial pilot). They all work and again there are no Skywalkers in sight- and you can't have Star Wars without a droid! Here we get K-2SO a rejiggered Imperial droid who now serves the Rebellion. Many have said he's a scene- stealer and he is with his snarky dialogue.   

You may notice I haven't mentioned the plot. Well it's basically a caper to recover the plans for the Death Star- straight out of the first movie. This is pretty well known so I won't dwell on it. This is more of a war movie too as you get the sense that these are soldiers and spies, so naturally there's a body count. In fact I was surprised in the first few minutes how ruthless Cassian was shown to be- that was kind of new for Star Wars. I liked it. Some have said that this is the Star Wars movie that adult fans were waiting for- those of us who remember the original trilogy fondly but were turned off by the prequels and The Force Awakens. All I can say is- yup.

I mentioned it is dark at times. It is and I wouldn't take young kids to this. I'll get into more why below in the SPOILER section. Also it's not a perfect movie. There are a lot of cameos and Easter eggs from the original movies. It's probably not a spoiler at this point to mention that Grand Moff Tarkin and Darth Vader are in this- there's been some controversy over using Tarkin since the actor is long dead. They created him using CGI and for me it didn't work- it was obviously CGI and I cringed every time. I don't think he needed to be here frankly, and Darth Vader didn't entirely work for me. 

I don't want to say more above the spoiler tag since I'm going to get into details a bit. Suffice to say this is a good Star Wars movie- perhaps not quite reaching the level of the original trilogy (although in some ways it surpasses those) and the kind of film I've been looking for. It finally feels like someone did it right. The middle get a bit clunky but overall this is a good movie with some emotional moments and strong characters. 

SPOILERS

Here be spoilers! I'm hoping that those who've seen the movie or want to discuss it will do so in the comments although I know that can tough for those who want to be spoiled. There's so much going on here though that I really wanted to talk more in depth. So... where to begin? I'll start with characters. I thought Mads Mikkelson was great as Galen Erso and Ben Mendelsohn surprisingly seemed a little over the top - I'm so tired of villains with no nuance. He's a good actor so I expected a bit more. I could have used more of Mikkelson and less of Mendelsohn.

Again Tarkin looked horrible. And Darth Vader looked okay although I expected him to be a little more imposing- he was clearly meant to intimidate Krennic in their scene together but that didn't entirely work for me. His dialogue too was clunky- he sounded good with James Earl Jones doing the voice again, but his dialogue sucked. And the end where he wipes out a bunch of rebels- that actually didn't work for me either. I'm sure him coming aboard a rebel ship and activating his lightsaber was supposed to be a badass moment, but for me it was like Yoda jumping around- sometimes less is more. I would have gotten more mileage if he would have stood by impassively while stormtroopers cleared the way, but I'm sure some people liked. 

Obviously if you've seen it you know that a lot of people die. I would have liked a few of them to make it actually- the galaxy is a big place, there's no reason some couldn't have made it, you could always say they're off doing something else when the Skywalkers take over the story. So that was unnecessary. I liked Jyn and Cassian a lot though- it's a shame we don't get to see them again. As for the cameos- I thought Leia looked ridiculous just like Tarkin. The cameos I did like were Artoo and Threepio. I was hoping we'd see them and they were there only for a minute- but that worked. 

I loved the planet Scarif. We haven't seen a tropical planet before in the series (or maybe we have in the cartoons but I haven't watched those) and it looked stunning. Fabulous location shooting. Otherwise I thought we visited perhaps too many planets, especially in the early going- there were four or five total I think?- so it was a bit of a travelogue perhaps, but Scarif was nice. One complaint I have though is the propensity in Star Wars for certain controls or devices to be in odd (read: plot dependent) places. Like on Scarif where they need to flip a switch and the switch is- not in a secure building- but on a beach. There was a lot of that in this movie. And the final space battle, while excellent in many ways, was very reminiscent of a scene from Return of the Jedi where a star destroyer is disabled and crashes. Star destroyers were not effective in this movie!

It was nice to see Yavin IV as well. I loved the scene where ships are taking off and we see a sentry or whatever he is on his perch tracking their movement- with the gas giant Yavin huge in the background- that was a nice callback. So again this movie had so many callbacks and Easter eggs and some worked while others didn't- but all in all this felt like a Star Wars movie. 

Bookcover Spotlight #80

I've always been fond of this one ever since reading it last year. I like how menacing she looks and also the words in the background, which tie into the story- are you asking for something you want? Or something you need? 

A Closed and Common Orbit

A Closed and Common Orbit is the sequel to The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet and this one tells two separate but overlapping stories - an AI trying to find its purpose and a young girl trying to escape a life of servitude. Jane is a cloned girl who has been built to provide labor- she works alongside a bunch of other girls, all with the same purpose- to sort and fix scrap. They work in large factories overseen by emotionless robots and they have no purpose but to work and sleep. Jane however escapes and comes in contact with an AI named Owl and together they plan to escape from the factory world. 

Sidra on the other hand is an AI trying to find meaning in her new body- she is the AI from the Wayfarer in the last book who has taken a new life in a "kit" or body housing, Instead of being a shipboard system she is now essentially a sapient AI- something that is illegal. So she has to be really careful as she navigates society. And like the first book, this society is diverse with a capital D- aliens of all kinds and humans mingle and live together on the tech haven where Sidra and her human friend Pepper live. 

This book is quite different from The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet in that the cast is smaller and there are just two narratives -Jane and Sidra. I love the world that Becky Chambers has created. It's a universe I'd love to live in, where interstellar travel is common and imubots keep you healthy, where modders can enhance themselves with cybernetic tech and vastly different races exist side by side. The book is slower than the previous one and tackles the same issues- the meaning of identity, the purpose of life, and just how far one can go with the very definition of life. 

It's a great story and thought provoking but it's not action packed. If you're looking for action and fast paced storytelling this isn't. I didn't mind though, I just like living vicariously in this setting for a while. I didn't enjoy it as much as the first book, but then I thought the first one was phenomenal so this was still a top notch read. The only characters returning from  the first book are Pepper and Lovelace (who renames herself Sidra). I thought Pepper was okay, I wasn't super invested in her character but I could relate a lot more to Sidra, who started out her life with an act of great generosity and now has to find out who she is. 

On the other side of things is the Jane story and it's largely a survival tale in the early bits. Jane is basically raised by an AI so we see how that works juxtaposed with Sidra's struggles as a newly awakened AI. Chambers really makes this universe work and there are nice moments of humor as well. I enjoyed the story for the most part but I don't consider it essential  like I do the first book. I'm hoping that future installments will revisit the Wayfarer crew or perhaps take a different direction, but if you enjoyed the first book this has a lot to offer. 

Book Collecting

It's probably not a surprise that a book blogger would collect books. When I was a kid I loved collecting books- I had a shelf of my favorite ones and boxes of books I had not even read yet. I'd go to used bookstores and buy a ton of books, and some I just never got to. I was also a big fan of cover art and would absolutely buy books for the cover, although it was usually one I wanted to read anyway. Nowadays I don't do that nearly as much, and with the advent of e- books I get a lot of my new reads that way.

Somewhere between college and moving and all that I lost or sold a lot of my old SF paperbacks, so those boxes of unread books are gone. Occasionally I'll be in a used bookstore and see one I had and I'm like "oh yeah, that one." But for the most part I buy new (or newer) books these days, not only because I'm blogging and reviewing but because there's so much good stuff now. I wanted to shine a light on actual book collecting though.

I collected a lot of older stuff. I also had certain cover artists I collected. The Tarzan covers by Neal Adams were faves and they all had the black covers, like the one above. There are 20- some Tarzan books and they look great all lined up on a shelf with the black spines. I didn't read them all, I just wanted the cover art and the black spines all lined up. Does anyone else do that? When I think back it's kind of amazing how many books I bought for that reason!

So... do you collect books? And what criteria do you use in determining what to collect?

Top Ten Books I'd Like From Santa

 

 Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. Each week a new Top Ten list will be posted. Everyone is welcome to join. Link back to The Broke and the Bookish so everyone can check out other bloggers' lists. It's a fun way to get to know fellow bloggers.

This week's topic is Top Ten Books (or book items) I'd like to see under the tree.  Rather than just books I'm including stuff I'd like, whether books or something else. There's a lot of bookish stuff out there, and I have a tendency to find stuff I *cough* want when shopping but of course I wouldn't buy for me at Christmas time. Would I?? 

So here's the stuff I'd love to see under the tree. Which I will probably just end up buying myself sometime next year lol. 

I like glasses and mugs and stuff so when I saw the Etsy shop listing for these...

Some wall art from Rock Paper Books. 

And BOOKS from Rock Paper Books- they do classics with updated, modernistic cover art. 

And since I'm a fan of Rock Paper Books as a bonus I'm including a selection of their covers.

Tuesday Tagline #18

"Four popular kids. One outcast. what a disaster."

I like this one for the design, it's kinda catchy with the outcast girl doing her own thing and the bird on the edge of the boat. 

Cover Characteristics- Book Covers of the Year

Cover Characteristics is a meme by Sugar and Snark- every week a characteristic is selected and we post 5 books with that week's theme.   

This week's pick- Book Covers of the Year 

The rogue topics continue as Cover Characteristics is officially on hiatus. This week is a special Book Covers of the Year edition.  These are the covers that were my favorites, for whatever reason- I like covers that are mysterious, or have good art, that jump off the shelf or give a taste of what the book is like- and for me these are the covers in 2016 that  met that standard. 

One of my favorites of the year, with Central Park and the constellation- not to mention the beam of light shining down- I think it gives a mysterious tone. 

Not an amazing cover necessarily, but I like it- she looks very menacing and between her expression and the sort of dot matrix look to the font, it gives off a certain tone. 

 

One of my favorite reads this year- I love the vegetation and the sense that this may be an idyllic setting with secrets to be revealed? 

  

Another favorite  cover, I love the sense of high seas and danger, along with the rain slicked window. 



I'll be honest I kinda wanted to read this one after just seeing the cover! While the book was a tad disappointing I love the mysterious nature of it- the hand trailing in the water, the bridge in the background and the colors of a twilight sky?  



I had mixed feelings on this book but it does have a nice twist, and I LOVE the cover. 



My favorite SF read of the year- tons of diversity, big ideas, and fun.