3 posts tagged “australia”
Got this a couple of days ago and wow. I have to say, yet another aussie fantasy book that I can add to my awesomeness list. I know their are a couple of series I realy love from brittish and american authors, but seriously, Australian Fantasy writers have their own spiecial flare. I am so glad I am Australian. (Isn't it funny? Books make me more patriotic than gold medals.)
WOW this book is good. I don't think I could compare it to Trudi Canavan, just because it is so amazingly different, but I think I could safely say I liked it better than Kylie Chan books, it has many of the same elements (A romance, something that Sasha was missing) and better writing. Don't get me wrong though, Kylie Chan still rocks my romance world. He he... gods.
Petrador has the amazing detail that I loved Sasha for, not the iritatingly detailed descriptions of Allison Croggon (they are good, but seriously I skip most of it) but the beautiful tactical believable descriptions of battles and fights that bring the action alive. It has the added bonus that Sasha loses some of her Mary Sue qualities, adding sexual humor, insinuation, a fair deal of swearing (She particularly likes to use Cock and Fuck) and her angry, bitchy arrogance to her previously bland personality. It was always their, it just didn't get enough screen time. Their is also another weakness that I liked the use of. Trust.
Ahh Joel Shepherd. I admire you. When you can write a serious, philisophical debate, with one person seriously ingured, humiliated and at the other persons mercy, battle is raging around them and still center the whole thing around cheese, you have won my heart. When you can use a sex scene to reveal a major plot point without making the thing seem forced, you have shown rather ingenoius ways of giving the thing a purpous (For reference, his sex scene description surparces Kylie Chans in detail by rather a lot. It might even come close to his battle descriptions, yet it's not pornographic at all, I don't feel embaresed reading it, which I think deserves extra kudos. It also involves a LOT of talking (as I said, plot points) which is probably the reason it works.)
It is a realy good read. Better than Sasha, and you can proabably get away with reading Petrodor without the first book, although I realy did enjoy Sasha, and some of the stuff about Serrin the meaning of certain Sallshen words and the interrelation of Nazi Keth, Verathain and Goren Yai might be lost on you. Yeah. read them. If you can't read Sasha at least give Petrodor a try. If you can't read Petrodor, well Page 421 is a good starting point if you want to get to the cheese bit. But then again, you won't get the start of the chapter... maybe 402? I don't know. Just read the whole book. It's realy good.
CHEESE!
Film & TV writers are on strike, which means everything except reality TV could halt production. Do you support the strike? Are any of your favorite shows in jeopardy?
Caitlin told me this the other day. My response? Are they going to replace them with bad fanfic writers? No? Then... WHOO HOO! I support the strike, as long as it lasts no longer than a year, and we are not flooded with reality TV (unless it is documentary style AWESOME reality tv lie 'Worlds Deadliest Catch' now that is a great show. It's educational folks!) but Australia won't be flooded. Why? Re-runs. Yep.
You see I don't mind them putting on re-runs. Re runs aren't that bad. And again, I don't think we'll even be flooded with these. You see Australia takes like a year to get anything from America. So it will keep coming in even though nothing new is being produced. It will take at least three months for the supply to run out.
The next reason I applaud the strike is because maybe, just maybe it will force Channel Ten to put popular sci-fi shows like Torchwood and Battlestar Gallactica in reasonable time slots and NOT at 1 am in the morning on a weekday. I mean come on, these things are followed with cult like obsession. You can't tell me they are getting lower ratings than the umpteenth re-run of a crack pot 'documentary' about how they've found Christ's body. I don't believe you, and never will. Next channel. Seriously. Most Christians think they are doing the wrong thing, are lying to make money and are destroying the basis of their religion. The atheists don't believe it because most of them don' believe Christ existed full stop, and I don't believe it. Just because they have a marking that 'may' say 'here lies Jesus son of Josef' does not mean it is THE Jesus son of Joesef. In fact the only people who do believe it are the Da Vinci code adicts who also believe that that triangle thingy at the Louvre (no I don't know how to spell that, and Steph, Marie, Do NOT correct it) is actually a grave. Can I point out that the hundreds of workmen who had to build the damned thing might hav NOTICED if some old guy tried to stick a heap of bones in.
Here's another great reason that this is a positive. American TV is really bad. Yep. It is divided into a few categories. Cop Shows, Medical Shows, Crappy Daytime Soaps and Lost Rip offs and Gilmore Girls. Cop shows are boring, old and no one is even going to notice if they just put on reruns because all the writers of them do is re use old plots in 'new and exciting ways' which would be okay if they hadn't used this particular 'new and exciting way' about six times already. Medical shows. Geeze guys, if you want to see what its like to work in a hospital, watch a bloody documentary, or one of the brilliant American medical show rip offs Australia produces, like 'medical emergency' or 'all saints'. (they are even better than the original!) Crappy day time soaps. Does anyone even watch these? I mean realy watch these, not like in a 'I flick onto the channel once a year and I still understand the plot line' kind of way. No? Thank GOD there is hope for us yet. Lost rip offs include any TV show like Heroes that have no real plot line and instead put of explaining what the hell is going on for three years. These often also fall into the Gilmore Girls Category. The Gilmore Girls category includes all shows that were good and are now horrible due to bad writing or whatever, for example, charmed, Gilmore Girls, lost, house, and about a thousand other shows.
Of cource some american TV shows are excempt from the list, including anything repeatedly axed by channel ten (See first few seasons of charmed while ten was going through it's obsessive big brother stage... oh wait ten is STILL going through its obsessive big brother faze.) anything where seasons disappear, episodes are put in the wrong order repeatedly, or there is a six month gap in the middle of a series (See Bones) Anything that has had it's time slot changed from a popular time slot to 1 am in the morning on a weekday (see Battlestar Gallactica) and anything less than 12 episodes in length that was axed by fox despite having a huge obsessive fan base (see firefly). Of course there are other categories of exemption, but these are the main ones.
So, American tv shows being crap, we need to get them from other sources. And as this strike so far only involves American writers we should have a sudden boom in programing produced in Britain. YES! Bring on the detective shows (these are not cop shows, they do not use the word 'cop' and they don't have American accents. They also don't reuse the same plot lines over and over... well most of them anyway) bring on Doctor who and Torchwood!
Okay fo maybe I got a little sidetracked, but I enjoyed my rant. This is Jessica. Goodbye and good day. (but not G'day. I refuse to be conned into using an Aussie stereotype, there are enough of them on American TV)
