ArchEnemy

Imagine this...
The power of imagination has been lost!

Now it's all about the artillery as AD52s, crystal shooters, spikejack tumblers, and orb cannons are unleashed in a war of weapons and brute force.

As Alyss searches wildly for the solution to the disaster that has engulfed her queendom, Arch declares himself King of Wonderland. The moment is desperate enough for Alyss to travel back to London for answers, where Arch's assassins are threatening Alice Liddell and her family. But after coming to the Liddells' assistance, Alyss discovers herself trapped in a conundrum of evaporating puddles. The shimmering portals that exist to transport her home through the Pool of Tears are disappearing!

What is happening in Wonderland? Deep within the Valley of Mushroom the Caterpillar Oracles issue this prophecy: "Action shall be taken to ensure the safety of the Heart Crystal. For Everqueen." But who is Everqueen?

As the metamorphosis of Wonderland unfolds, enemies become allies, bitter rivals face off, and Queen Alyss and Redd Heart must both confront their pasts in this thrilling, no-holds-barred conclusion to the New York Times bestselling series.

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My initial reaction? It's over?!? What?!? It can't be over! There has to be more! But, no matter how many times I tried, the back cover was the back cover. I wasn't ready for it to be over and it didn't feel over. I guess I wanted to know what happened to everyone... and I can't tell you more than that without spoilers...drat! I honestly hope that, at some point, Frank decides to give us a slim tome to let us know. So, now that I've semi-gushed, let me get down to details:

The good? This entire series is good. I loved the story, the changes to what we all think we know and the characters.

The bad? This book tends to focus a lot more on the bad guys than the good guys. Granted, if Alyss and the white imaginationists had as much time spent on them, the book may have been another third thicker and the truth? I'd have been okay with that. While I very much enjoyed Arch and Redd, I wanted to know more about the others.

Overall? A series that I will be recommending to others for ages to come. It's one that I *might* even convince my boys to read, so long as I tell them the main character is a bad guy..and not a good girl. ;)

Geek-o-Rama received a copy of this book for the purpose of this review. All thoughts, comments, and opinions are those of the individual reviewer.

Seeing Redd

Alyss of Wonderland's rule has only just begun, and already those who prefer chaos to peace are threatening to destroy everything worth imagining. Trailed by newly appointed royal bodyguard Homburg Molly, Alyss is doing her best to keep pace with the non-stop demands of being queen while attempting to evade Molly for a few private moments with Dodge.

Alyss' life is a challenging mix of duty, love and tough decisions, and then a series of phantom sightings set fire to an urban myth of Her Imperial Viciousness' return and have everyone...Seeing Redd.

Has Redd somehow freed herself and her chief assassin, The Cat, from the confides of the Heart Crystal? If not, then who has resurrected Redd's brutal foot soldiers the Glass Eyes and set them loose to attack Wonderland on all sides?

Battles rage, looking glasses explode, and the Alyssians once again unite to defend White Imagination in this fast-paced follow-up to the New York Times bestselling The Looking Glass Wars.

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Last week, I told you about book one in this series and how much I completely adored it. I confess that I loved this one only slightly less. It was another book that once I started reading, I couldn't put it down, and even after I did, I'd find my eyes straying to the book because I wanted to know what would happen next. Unlike the first book, which in some ways could stand alone, this book certainly has a cliff hanger ending. Thank goodness I have the final book already! I need to dig it out of my travel bag so that I can drive into it.

Like book 1, this book  is filled with action. In fact, for poor Alyss, the action seems to never stop. I could see everything laid out in my head (thank you, Imagination!) and it felt as if I were watching everything through one of the fantastical devices that the Wonderlanders used in the book. If I have one complaint, it's that about halfway through the book (estimating from memory), there is one spot where a bunch of time passes but the narrative doesn't adequately make that clear and for a paragraph or so, I was a bit confused and actually went back and re-read that page to make sure it wasn't in my head. All in all, it wasn't anything that I couldn't get past, so I'm not dinging this book much for that.

If you've read book one and loved it (and I don't know how you couldn't have), get book two. If you don't have this series at all, don't wait until the Looking Glasses are all smashed, go and buy them. You won't regret it and if you do...well...I dunno...

Geek-o-Rama received a copy of this book for the purpose of this review. All thoughts, comments, and opinions are those of the individual reviewer.

The Looking Glass Wars

Alyss of Wonderland?

When Alyss Heart, heir to the Wonderland throne, must flee through the Pool of Tears to escape the murderous aunt Redd, she finds herself lost and alone in Victorian London. Befriended by an aspiring author named Lewis Carrol, Alyss tells the violent, heartbreaking story of her young life. Alyss trusts this author to tell the truth so that someone, somewhere will find her and bring her home. But he gets the story all wrong. He even spells her name incorrectly!

Fortunately, Royal Bodyguard Hatter Madigan knows all too well the awful truth of Alyss' story and he is searching every corner of our world to find the lost princess and return her to Wonderland so she may eventually battle Redd for her rightful place as the Queen of Hearts.

The Looking Glass Wars unabashedly challenges our Wonderland assumptions surrounding mad tea parties, grinning Cheshire cats, and a curious little blond girl to reveal an epic battle in the endless war for Imagination.

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Once upon a time, I went to a convention and I met this man who was incredibly passionate about the books that he had written and after a bit of begging and pleading on my part, he handed me the first book and let me take it home to read. This is the result of that fate meeting.

As a girl who has long believed in magic and the power of Imagination, I was thrilled to find out that the great power in the land of Wonderland was Imagination. I was even more thrilled that as I read page after page, I just kept getting pulled further into a story that is as fertile as any garden I have ever planted. Frank took characters that so many of us grew up on and he reimagined them in ways that most of us never would have imagined and yet somehow, it works. I will warn you that this book may be darker than some might be expecting. For me, that just made it all the more real. In life, nothing is always roses (pun intended?) and sweet smelling things. The fact that this book is full of political intrigue, every day life and the struggle to hold on to who you are when nobody believes in you is what makes it a wonderful read.

From start to finish, this is a book that I couldn't put down. I've now read it twice since he handed me that book nearly two years ago (somehow my original review got lost) and both times was exactly the same. I picked up the book and was pulled into the book faster than someone who jumped into The Pool of Tears. I'm only sad that due to travel and being mislaid, my book is a bit the worse for wear. Perhaps just the excuse I need to invest in a hardcover copy.

Geek-o-Rama received a copy of this book for the purpose of this review. All thoughts, comments, and opinions are those of the individual reviewer.

The Hobbit, Part 2: A Really, Really Great Set of Disks

by: Jim Smith

So now, just four months after it hit theaters, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey has been released on home video.  It comes in three flavors, DVD, Blu-Ray+DVD, and Blu-Ray 3D+Blu Ray+DVD.  All of them come with a redemption code for an UltraViolet streaming copy as well.  Lets call them vanilla, fudge ripple and neapolitan, respectively.  My copy is fudge ripple.  The case contains three discs, the movie itself on a blu-ray and DVD and a separate disc ... a blu-ray disc ... with the special features.

The first feature is New Zealand: Home of Middle Earth, which speaks to the incredible locations they used in filming the movie.  It is actually an extended advertisement for the New Zealand tourist bureau.  One revelation is that they completely rebuilt Hobbiton for The Hobbit.  The original Hobbiton set was made primarily of polystyrene, but when they rebuilt the set, they used brick and wood, building a permanent set that would serve as a future tourist attraction.

Also included are ten video blogs spanning everything from preproduction to the world premiere in Wellington.  For the geeky among us, one of the video blogs is all about the technical aspects of the film, including a discussion of the decision to shoot The Hobbit in 48 frames per second.  One thing I learned was the fact that human vision is the equivalent of 60 frames per second, so this is the first movie filmed as close to natural vision as possible.

Along with the discussion of the frame rate is a technical primer on filming in 3D.  The Hobbit broke a lot of ground in 3D filming, requiring many custom cameras and set designs.  Compact cameras, crane cameras, aerial cameras all were needed to film and epic movie such as this.

One of the most anachronistic moments of the special features was seeing a dwarf on a mountaintop with a helicopter passing behind him.  But then again, isn’t that what we want from a film such as this?  An escape from the hubbub and hurly-burly of the modern world into a world of wonder?  The special features of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey are a ticket to that world of wonder, and unlike a magician revealing his secrets, they add to the magic instead of destroying it.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (Part 1: The Movie)

Review by Jim Smith

After the Lord of the Rings, there was a great deal of clamoring for the Hobbit to reach the big screen in the same epic fashion.  It took only nine years of patience, and fans were rewarded … oh were they rewarded.

By now, we all know the story.  A small hobbit of The Shire is drafted into a company of dwarves on a quest to reclaim their ancestral kingdom from the dragon Smaug.  Bilbo Baggins becomes a most unlikely hero, and the fulcrum which would change the direction of the future of the world … though that part of the story is not in the Hobbit, but the Lord of the Rings, so let’s stick to the story at hand.

That, oddly enough, is the chief complaint people had of the movie.  The movie included vast scenes that do not appear in the book.  After working very hard to stay true to the books when making the Lord of the Rings, and making changes for the sake of time only grudgingly, Peter Jackson folds in external information that, while germane to the story, it is history gleaned from the appendixes of the Lord of the Rings and other works containing the collected works and notes or JRR Tolkien.  While it is germane to the story, it is history, and history … well who wants to read that?  For that matter who even cares about it?

Another issue that some viewers had a problem with was that Peter Jackson chose to film The Hobbit in a higher than normal frame rate, forty-eight frames per second.  Many moviegoers saw it in a normal frame rate, twenty-four frames per second as many of the prints sent out to theaters were downsampled.  However, moviegoers who saw it in digital 3D were treated to the movie in all of its high-framerate splendor.  Likewise, viewers who saw it in digital 2D got to see the beauty of the high-framerate as well.

So, on to the good, the bad and the ugly.

The Good:  The cinematography is without equal.  Just as with The Lord of the Rings, sweeping vistas, epic scenes and wonderful use of color and texture make this movie visually stunning.  The dialogue, while not exactly according to Tolkien, is excellent.  Once again, PJ delivers.

Dwarves singing.  It is enough to give you chills when the basses and baritones sing of their longing to cross the Misty Mountains to their homeland.

Sylvester McCoy as Radagast.  The actor who once played the seventh incarnation of the Doctor in the venerable series Doctor Who lends his unique comedic style to playing Radagast the Brown, one of Gandalf’s peers on the council of the wise.  He plays the part to perfection and is one of the gems of the extended story that Jackson weaves for us.

The Bad: Bilbo is made to seem much more heroic in the movie than he should be.  Twice he has  the chance to abandon the quest and return home.  The first time he would have but for the intervention of the Goblins in the cave.  The second time, after escaping Goblin Town,  he walks up to Thorin and says he will not go home until he has helped Thorin reclaim his.

There are times, particularly when dealing with the subplot of Azog, the White Orc that the story bogs down.  Also in Rivendell when the Dwarves are portrayed as uncultured, boorish and frankly rude guests.

The hyper-realism created by the faster frame-rate is especially noticeable in flyover scenes such as in Goblin Town.  It caused some audience members to feel queasy in the theatrical release, particularly in 3D showings.

The Ugly: Azog.  ‘Nuff said.

All in all, the movie met the expectations of most fans, and we all reveled as Biblo ran after the dwarves shouting “I’m going on an adventure!”  We join him, and we can’t wait for the next leg of our journey.

This review is written upon me buying the 2D Blu-Ray/DVD/Ultra Violet combo pack.  Part 2 of this review will focus on the Blu Rays and special features.

Kickstarter of the Week: The Family Troll

The Family Troll is a heart warming tale of an abandoned young troll who blesses the lives of a young couple in the most amazing way!

This is a story book (OGN) written by Jill Kirkham and drawn by Tyler Kirkham (DC comics' Green Lantern Corps, New Guardians, Red Hood) and is on Kickstarter at the moment: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1561924987/the-family-troll-picture-book

It is loosely based on Tyler and Jill's real life experiences as they have struggled to have a child of their own. It takes place in a fantasy world, and follows the lives of a young couple as they have the very same struggle.

They choose to consult a wizard in the hopes of receiving a magic spell or potion to solve their problem. The Wizard agrees, but only if they will watch over his newly rescued, adopted baby troll. The Wizard must travel the land to gather the ingredients for the spell and cannot take care of this infant troll himself.

The couple raises the troll over the course of a year and grow very close to him. He blesses their lives in numerous ways, and also ends up helping the couple forget their worries and live life to the fullest.

This blissful year eventually leads the couple to even have a child of their own!

They end up adopting the troll and live happily ever after!

The story seems simple, but it surely is more then just that, just based on the endeauvours of the Kirkham's themselves.

Lavishly illustrated in between Kirkham's full-time DC Comics exclusive, this fantasy tale is surely to touch the hearts of both children and adults alike.

In order to raise both awareness of this truly unique venture as well as trying to reach new targets in funding, Tyler Kirkham has promised a Custom Sketch for ALL Current Pledgers who will add either $50 (for a torso) or $100 (for a full body) to their current pledges. This is a true feat since normally Tyler will only sketch at conventions and is now enabling this new opportunity to fans of his artwork!