Magician, Raymond E. Feist

This is relatively famous, and I finally read most of it. In this case it unashamedly does rip off Tolkien; the elves are even named in Sindarin. In fact, what it is is the background for a roleplaying campaign; it was originally conceived as that, and later transformed into fiction, and remains a most excellent background. There's an interesting variety of cultures, on small and large scale, interesting local politics, and several different metaphysical collisions going on at once.

Indeed, almost too many: when you read about the nameless enemy who consumed the entire worlds the current populations are descended from refugees from, you forget about the ancient dragon-lords who ruled as near-gods, and so on. But it definitely filled me with a desire to find out what actually had happened.

The characters are alright, a little generic, but generally pleasant to read about. Unfortunately, actually reading the book didn't really interest me, I ended up just skimming ahead to get a plot summary.

Snake agent

Snake Agent by Liz Williams is about Inspector Chen, officer in Singapore Three police force, and Chinese Hell. Unsurprisingly, this is a marvellous, original world; I'm always a sucker for modern stories about people who visit afterlives, and the descriptions of Chen's life, and demon and human friends, are vivid.

Unfortunately, I really want it to read like Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrel, an academic tone with occasional dry wit that fits Chen's intellectual style and ominousness of hell, and am always disappointed when it adopts a more cartoony style, struggling to humorously juxtapose demons as treating evil things as virtuous, yet still working as characters. I'm not sure to what extent it disappoints me by not being the book I wanted it to be, and to what extent it's a wonderful idea that works in non-unified ways.

(Thanks muchly to despotliz for introducing it though.)

Come to think of it, did I mention before (humorously?) the possibility of making a standard template for reviews? Possibly a good way to do it would be to list the aspects which I later feel are engraved positively on my memory: afterwards that often seems like a good barometer for how I saw a book.

Consider for instance Startrek. I've almost no desire to watch any episodes again. And yet, I've a great fondness for all of the characters; in memories and films and tie-ins, they've acquired an epic quality possibly out of proportion to how they were originally shown. I can remember few episodes, and yet one could (and people do) go on writing stories about those characters forever.

In Snake Agent, I feel Chen, and Inari, and Zhu Irzh, and Ma and Tso will always stick with me, as will the world of night harbour, and the hell mirroring Singapore Three, and the lower levels hunted by Wu'ei of the court of hell. Many scenes are also quite effective. On the other hand, I don't particularly remember the eventual plot; any other similar excuse to have those characters in those settings would have worked as well for me. And as I say, in many ways it was wonderful, but something about the tone seemed to fall between two stools for me.

Spell checkers

Would it be worth having an "unlikely" mark for a spelling checker? For those occasions when it's entirely possible you did mean "licens (n, ceremonial greek fireplace)"[1], but it's overwhelmingly more likely you meant the common word "license"?

It would have to be visually represented as not requiring you to get rid of it, but merely to draw your attention to it, if that's possible. On the other hand, you could argue that's what spelling checkers ought to do anyway, although they are not normally treated like that. At least, "not in dictionary" is a clear judgement, even if the writing is correct (grammar "checkers" results really are all "suggested").

Come to think of it, maybe there's an uncomfortable parallel with compiler warnings?

[1] Warning, not an actual definition.
[2] I think perhaps the "one-liner" tag, as misleading as it has become, represents the nearest I ever come to a single contained thought, rather than a fifteen interrelated ones.

Thor

Oh, a Thor film proposed! http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/130033/branagh_official_for_thor.html

Although they're in decline (both in number and excellence) I like superhero movies. But I've no knowledge of the Thor comics other than that they exist, and approach the idea of a God as a superhero, whatever the background, with some trepidition -- does anyone know if they worked out well?