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Aug. 18th, 2015 03:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackWolf of Wall Street (film)
Based on a true story, about a trader who becomes rich founding an exceptionally fraudulent trading house. I was really interested in the first half, when it showed what sort of ridiculous abusive high-octane lifestyle existed already, and when he lost his job in the recession, how he became successful selling massive amounts of unreliable penny stocks to random members of the public.
And I didn't care that much about the second half, which showed the trading house morphing into a respected firm despite constant cocaine and orgies, and him scrambling to hide his winnings. It was some combination of too ridiculous (if exaggerated) and too depressing (if not).
I still know really little about financial firms. I always think of the "choosing what to buy" sort of trading, but this is emphatically on the "pretend there's a system so you can sell some arbitrary stock to people who trust you and take a cut" side.
Bitter seeds (novel by Ian Tregellis)
This is somewhere between modern urban fantasy like Atrocity Archives and Rivers of London, and WWII thriller/spy novels. It's almost like the backstory to modern urban fantasy which often has the habit of alluding to events during WWII.
I think WWII is a lot overused, so I was hesitant about reading it, but interested enough in the premise to give it a go. I enjoyed the first half, which paints a convincing picture of covert agencies in the UK and in Germany developing people with psychic powers and spying on each other. And there are an interesting set of characters on both sides. It alludes to atrocities (some on both sides), but doesn't dwell on details.
But I found the second half harder going. There were the same good bits, but there was a lot of "someone can see the future so don't bother trying to guess what their agenda is, they just act gnomic all the time" which I liked as long as they seemed to be working towards something, but seemed to get stuck in a feedback loop of obscurity. (It may be resolved in a later book, I'm not sure.) There was a lot of "everyone is just as bad as each other" which I found tiring. And I started running out of endings to root for.
Hard spell (novel randomly picked up from the library)
I like being able to pick up a novel from the library on a whim! This is detective-style urban fantasy, almost stereotypically so, except it's actually set in a police department, which I thought was a naturally good choice for having a steady stream of plot to resolve -- I'm surprised there isn't more of that amongst the freelance wizards and private detectives.
The characters were hardboiled detective, ambitious rookie, tired commander, put-upon expert, etc, etc, but well done and I enjoyed reading about them. The magic was reasonably consistent and hole-free, which is surprisingly hard to do.
It did a couple of interesting things well I've not often seen. Vampirism is portrayed as a genuinely bad thing, something you suffer from, but not the erasure of your personality, and the main character both lost a relative to a vampire, and arranged for a relative to be turned into a vampire when they had a fatal illness. But unlike many books, it doesn't wipe away the choice, it shows the main character living with a daughter he wants to love, but can't invite back into human society, who he wants to trust, but can't be trusted :(
And the big threat is a classic old-school book of forbidden secrets with various ominous "may destroy the world" spells, but it's genuinely quite ominous which I found well done.
I was also disappointed the apocalyptic spell chosen by the bad guy was "make a vampire who's immune to all the usual weaknesses". That seemed much less ominous than advertised. It's bad, sure, but in a world where the government openly acknowledges the supernatural, one super-powered person isn't that much of a threat.
However, I didn't really feel it added a lot else over other urban fantasy books, so I'd enjoy reading more if I didn't have anything else to do, but probably won't see them out.
Bittersweet summer (YA novel)
I haven't read a lot of non-fantasy YA, but someone happened to describe this and it sounded interesting. A girl was severely bullied when young, with ongoing PTSD she's slowly recovered from, and her parents return to the area where the bullies still live: one just as bad, one trying to change. The reforming one falls in love with her and eventually persuades her he's safe and worthwhile to be around.
It's fairly well written, I was interested in everything and the romance felt like a natural part of the book, not tacked on. I was interested that it followed a common theme of "suitor interested in protagonist, obviously bad news, but turns out well in the end", except that he actually IS bad news and actually DOES reform specifically against the odds.
It seems like lots of stories follow that general outline, but don't really justify the "yes, BAD NEWS" bit of the story nor really justify the "worthwhile afterwards" part. That's an easy mistake to make when everyone wants that shape of story anyway, but it's something that strains my enjoyment when it's not done well enough. When the obstacles feel contrived, the whole story feels pointless. And if the suitor does something gallant or heroic, but doesn't actually change any of their bad points, they may be an excellent person but may be just as disastrous a suitor.
Whereas here, the ex-bully is genuinely trying to reform and genuinely finding it difficult. And massively screws up in trying to use the protagonist as a metric for redemption. It's a classic example where, if he'd realised he should apologise (not in person) and not push, and accept that he has to wait until she's ready, nothing he can do can speed that up, he might have been able to reach out to her. But by pushing he's intrusive and makes things worse for her, and doesn't realise that even though he's trying (a) he doesn't have "not being an arsehole" perfected yet and (b) because of the history, even mild things can be really bad for her. And worse, lots of the adults don't realise either. And it's headed for disaster, but luckily it happens to work out well after all, and that feels like a victory snatched from the jaws of defeat.
Based on a true story, about a trader who becomes rich founding an exceptionally fraudulent trading house. I was really interested in the first half, when it showed what sort of ridiculous abusive high-octane lifestyle existed already, and when he lost his job in the recession, how he became successful selling massive amounts of unreliable penny stocks to random members of the public.
And I didn't care that much about the second half, which showed the trading house morphing into a respected firm despite constant cocaine and orgies, and him scrambling to hide his winnings. It was some combination of too ridiculous (if exaggerated) and too depressing (if not).
I still know really little about financial firms. I always think of the "choosing what to buy" sort of trading, but this is emphatically on the "pretend there's a system so you can sell some arbitrary stock to people who trust you and take a cut" side.
Bitter seeds (novel by Ian Tregellis)
This is somewhere between modern urban fantasy like Atrocity Archives and Rivers of London, and WWII thriller/spy novels. It's almost like the backstory to modern urban fantasy which often has the habit of alluding to events during WWII.
I think WWII is a lot overused, so I was hesitant about reading it, but interested enough in the premise to give it a go. I enjoyed the first half, which paints a convincing picture of covert agencies in the UK and in Germany developing people with psychic powers and spying on each other. And there are an interesting set of characters on both sides. It alludes to atrocities (some on both sides), but doesn't dwell on details.
But I found the second half harder going. There were the same good bits, but there was a lot of "someone can see the future so don't bother trying to guess what their agenda is, they just act gnomic all the time" which I liked as long as they seemed to be working towards something, but seemed to get stuck in a feedback loop of obscurity. (It may be resolved in a later book, I'm not sure.) There was a lot of "everyone is just as bad as each other" which I found tiring. And I started running out of endings to root for.
Hard spell (novel randomly picked up from the library)
I like being able to pick up a novel from the library on a whim! This is detective-style urban fantasy, almost stereotypically so, except it's actually set in a police department, which I thought was a naturally good choice for having a steady stream of plot to resolve -- I'm surprised there isn't more of that amongst the freelance wizards and private detectives.
The characters were hardboiled detective, ambitious rookie, tired commander, put-upon expert, etc, etc, but well done and I enjoyed reading about them. The magic was reasonably consistent and hole-free, which is surprisingly hard to do.
It did a couple of interesting things well I've not often seen. Vampirism is portrayed as a genuinely bad thing, something you suffer from, but not the erasure of your personality, and the main character both lost a relative to a vampire, and arranged for a relative to be turned into a vampire when they had a fatal illness. But unlike many books, it doesn't wipe away the choice, it shows the main character living with a daughter he wants to love, but can't invite back into human society, who he wants to trust, but can't be trusted :(
And the big threat is a classic old-school book of forbidden secrets with various ominous "may destroy the world" spells, but it's genuinely quite ominous which I found well done.
I was also disappointed the apocalyptic spell chosen by the bad guy was "make a vampire who's immune to all the usual weaknesses". That seemed much less ominous than advertised. It's bad, sure, but in a world where the government openly acknowledges the supernatural, one super-powered person isn't that much of a threat.
However, I didn't really feel it added a lot else over other urban fantasy books, so I'd enjoy reading more if I didn't have anything else to do, but probably won't see them out.
Bittersweet summer (YA novel)
I haven't read a lot of non-fantasy YA, but someone happened to describe this and it sounded interesting. A girl was severely bullied when young, with ongoing PTSD she's slowly recovered from, and her parents return to the area where the bullies still live: one just as bad, one trying to change. The reforming one falls in love with her and eventually persuades her he's safe and worthwhile to be around.
It's fairly well written, I was interested in everything and the romance felt like a natural part of the book, not tacked on. I was interested that it followed a common theme of "suitor interested in protagonist, obviously bad news, but turns out well in the end", except that he actually IS bad news and actually DOES reform specifically against the odds.
It seems like lots of stories follow that general outline, but don't really justify the "yes, BAD NEWS" bit of the story nor really justify the "worthwhile afterwards" part. That's an easy mistake to make when everyone wants that shape of story anyway, but it's something that strains my enjoyment when it's not done well enough. When the obstacles feel contrived, the whole story feels pointless. And if the suitor does something gallant or heroic, but doesn't actually change any of their bad points, they may be an excellent person but may be just as disastrous a suitor.
Whereas here, the ex-bully is genuinely trying to reform and genuinely finding it difficult. And massively screws up in trying to use the protagonist as a metric for redemption. It's a classic example where, if he'd realised he should apologise (not in person) and not push, and accept that he has to wait until she's ready, nothing he can do can speed that up, he might have been able to reach out to her. But by pushing he's intrusive and makes things worse for her, and doesn't realise that even though he's trying (a) he doesn't have "not being an arsehole" perfected yet and (b) because of the history, even mild things can be really bad for her. And worse, lots of the adults don't realise either. And it's headed for disaster, but luckily it happens to work out well after all, and that feels like a victory snatched from the jaws of defeat.