I moved my blog

I moved my blog to the superior wordpress website. Here is the link to it and why I moved.

http://chortleatmygirth.wordpress.com/2010/10/25/moving-day/

Toy Story 3 (Green)

This is what (Green) means.

Of course it’s (Green). It’s a Pixar movie. They are one of the most successful movie makes of all time. They have made only one bad movie: Cars (Red). But even that got them a bunch of money and moderate reviews.

Pixar has already shown us that they can do sequels. Toy Story 2 was awesome. Now we find out that they can also rock out the trilogies.

I don't want to find out if they can do a forth one.

Toy Story 3 was the end of the story for the toys. We don’t need to see anymore of their adventures. This movie reached a definite and irreversible ending. Andy has moved on. The toys have moved on. It ends the way it needed to end. Making another movie will just ruin the emotion of this movie.

And this movie was ripe with emotion.

Like I’ve said before I didn’t laugh as much at this movie as I did with Despicable Me but this felt more real. Yes that’s right. The movie about talking toys felt more real. While watching this movie you will be genuinely concerned for their well being. The whole movie is about them trying to escape the horrors of being a daycare toy and as you watch them get used and abused by the kids you really feel for them.

That’s the magic of Pixar. They make you care about things no one else could. Toys, bugs, Monsters, Rats, mute robots, and other things that you would never have thought you could feel something for (notice I did not say anything about cars).

The big question going into this movie is how do you end the story? Where will the toys end up? You can tell by the trailer that the daycare thing isn’t going to work out for them so… then what.

I honestly had no idea. As the movie played out I saw hints at a lot of different things. The attic, the garbage, or other places. But when we finally get to the ending, after some fantastic close calls and emotional oh-no-they-are-going-to-die moments you realize that the ending the writers came up with is the perfect ending.

I loved it.

It made me want to play with my Ninja Turtle toys again. Or at least made me wonder where they ended up.

I’ll just say my one complaint again even though I mentioned it in my mini review.

Pixar is way too awesome to be wasting time making sequels. They have a ton of creativity and I would have rather seen a new original movie then another Toy Story movie. But I’ll forgive them this one time because this movie is so good.

The next challenge for Pixar will be to make a good sequel for Cars (It’s already being made). If they can do that I will be very impressed.

Takers (Red)

(red) means don't watch it.

If I had known more about the plot I would have just gone to Scott Pilgrim again.

It’s almost a remake of The Italian Job.

There are a bunch of thieves who throw out all their own rules for one last job. This one last job is an Italian Job. They actually use those words. I couldn’t believe it.

An Italian Job is to blow up the street under an armored truck and then take the money and run away in mini’s.

The first half of this movie is very boring. Mostly because we’ve seen it all before, in that one movie with Mark Wahlberg. When they finally get around to doing the job it all goes sideways on them.

They should have watched the DVD a couple more times before trying to imitate it.

There was one action scene I found to be entertaining. The rest of it was uninspired and dragged on for too long. The friend sitting beside me left to go to the bathroom as Chris Brown’s character started running from the cops. She was able to get back before the chase scene was over. I swear he was running for at least a week, or at least that’s how long it felt.

After the job goes sideways the writers are stuck with finding ways for the characters to get out. They must have just watched The Departed cause they went with the kill-everyone solution.

The comic relief in this movie was the dialog. I wouldn’t be surprised if the script said, “say the most gangster thing you can think of.”

With a script like that it’s no wonder Paul Walker sounds like an idiot.

There are a couple sub-plots in this movie that don’t really make sense. The whole issue with Matt Dillon’s partner didn’t really lead to anything (but I did find it interesting) and the crack head sister was pointless. Why did they write her in the movie?

It bothered me how there were no good guys in this movie. The Center of Good kept flipping back and forth between the cops and the takers. When people started dying I wasn’t sure if it was good or bad. “Didn’t that guy just kill a cop? Why is the heavy handed violin music telling me to be sad he’s trying to be Butch Cassidy?”

T.I. Sounds like he’s trying to be Snoop Dog.

Snoop Dog is funny and so is T.I.

T.I. Just doesn’t realize he’s the joke.

Skip this movie.

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World (Green)

I laughed more at Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World than I did at The Other Guys. I did not see that coming.

A plot consisting of Michael Cera fighting off the seven evil exes of the girl he’s fallen for has so much against it that it’s a miracle it turned into one of the most entertaining movies of the summer.

There have been many attempts at making movies look like moving comic books but they have all come up short, (Sin City, 300, Watchmen, Speed Racer - I know Speed Racer isn’t based off a comic but it’s style is a lot like Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World that we’ll just pretend it’s based on a comic and not anime) or they just end up embarrassing themselves (Hulk)

This is the only movie that was able to pull off the comic book look. It did it the only way it could work, by making it part of the joke.

It works.

You can tell right from the beginning that this show is going to be awesome. They show us the Universal logo and we hear the Universal theme; they are both done in 8-bit. You can’t help but smile.

After ten minutes I had fallen in love with this world. I had no idea how they were going to keep my attention through 7 battles but they did.

Each battle was so unique that instead of dreading the next encounter you were eagerly anticipating it. It’s hard for me to pick my favorite one because each of them were so cool and so different they almost don’t fall under the same category.

But if I had to pick it would be the telepathic vegan. That’s straight up genius.

Vegan academy? Awesome.

I deem this movie the most underrated movie of the summer. How can it already be out of the box office top ten? It's so clever and so entertaining. If you like comics, laughing, video games, music videos, Toronto, or anime you should go see this movie immediately.

Who doesn’t fall into one of those categories?

Also, Michael Cera totally redeems himself for being in unwatchable movies ever since Arrested Development *sniff* was cancelled.

Movie Months

Good movies do not come out in September, October, or November. The best a movie can hope to be in these months is to be average. So I don’t watch as many movies in these months as I do in the summer time. The only exception are seasonal movies for Halloween and Christmas (which sometimes come out at the end of November for some reason). Paranormal Activity 2 is coming out this Halloween. I can’t wait. I need a good laugh.

August is supposed to be the dumping ground for the summer movies not good enough to be in the real summer months of May, June, and July. I was surprised by the quality of this years August movies. The Other Guys and Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World are both awesome movies.

If you are like me and enjoy really horrible movies then the best time of year for this is January, February, and March. These months are so far away from awards season that the studios put out all the crap that doesn’t stand a chance.

Oscar bate comes out in December.

Please note that Oscar bate does not equal good movie. In fact, it’s usually the opposite.

The point of telling you all this is that now that summer movies are over I won’t be writing as many reviews.

That being said, (Your welcome SGSers) I am going to see Takers tonight. A movie with Paul Walker and Hayden Christensen so you know it’s going to be golden.

Quick Reveiws

Been busy working and getting lost in the wilderness so I have been neglecting my reviews. Someday I will write full reviews for these but for now you will have to be satisfied with these short reviews.

Toy Story 3 (Green)

I love Pixar and I love this movie. It was the perfect ending to the toys story and if I wasn’t such a Douche Bag I might have even gotten teary eyed. For sure I got nostalgic for my Ninja Turtle toys and wondered where they were and what they were up to. Hope whoever has them is treating them right.

The only bad thing I have to say about this movie is that Pixar is so incredibly good at coming up with awesome original stories that it's a waist of creativity to go back to the same world of toys three times. I love this movie but I would have rather seen an all new Pixar movie.

Despicable Me (Green)

Solid animated movie for not being Pixar. It doesn’t have the heart of Toy Story 3 but I laughed more at this movie. The minions make this movie. I didn’t expect a lot and was pleasantly surprised with an entertaining children's movie (unlike Toy Story 3 which is just a straight up entertaining movie).

Salt (Yellow)

Salt is the worst title for a movie ever. They didn’t even use a Salt pun. Didn't even use the word assaulted. So disappointed. Not the best movie ever but not unwatchable. Wait for the DVD. It’s not worth the ticket price.

At one point Tom Cruise Had a choice between this movie and Knight and Day. He made the wrong choice.

Step-Up 3D (GRED)

Yes! The first (GRED) movie of the year!

Just so you know (GRED) means it’s so bad it’s good. But not good enough to see in theaters. Wait until it comes out on DVD, invite some friends over, and laugh at it together in the comfort of your home.

Stupidly simple plot. Horrible dialog delivered by professional dancers who can’t act. I laughed a bunch of times. It’s great. It also made me realize that 3D has a home in lame movies. They are already bad; the 3D can’t ruin what’s already ruined,

Best line (said in a monotone voice in what’s supposed to be a heated argument): “You better check yourself… Fricken ridiculous.”

The Other Guys (Green)

It’s no Anchorman but I still laughed more then I thought I would. I think it’s the best Will Farrel movie since the awesomeness that is Anchorman. Samuel L. Jackson and The Rock aren’t in it for very long but their exit was amazing as was the castreaction to it. Mark Wahlberg rocked as the angry guy and his lion vs. Tuna rant was alomst as funny as Will Farrells retort.

The only flaw is it falls into the trap of cop movie cliches and the third act lacked the comedy that held strong for the rest of the movie.

But it’s still worth a viewing.

The Expendibles (GRED)

(GRED) but very close to just being (RED).

Old men fighting. One liners. No plot. Millions of bullets.

Watching Sylvester Stallone run is so funny it’s almost worth the price of admission.

Under the Dome (Red)

By Stephen King

Starts out strong but ends as horribly as possible. It’s a very long book with a bunch of subplots. Most of them end with someone getting shot in the head. Which I guess is creative cause I never would have thought to do that twelve times in a row.

The ending is so uninspired it’s laughable. All the interesting parts are skipped over and all the lame Crystal Meth drug trips have pages and pages devoted to them.

The characters are cookie cutters of each other. The villain is an old man with a bad heart who people can’t say no to. For most of the book the Dome is just a background thought while they deal with people who are either way to dumb or way to crazy to ever be believable. Good luck trying to suspend your disbelief.

The villains name is Big Jim. His son is named Junior but in my heart I know there is a rough draft of this book where Junior goes by the name Slim Jim.

Pirate Latitudes (Yellow)

By Michael Crichton

Michael Crichton is one of my favorite authors (every one needs to read Timeline) but this book was very disappointing. Almost everything that happens in this book happens in one of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. The only original stuff was the ship to ship battles. And they were cool enough to bump this from a (red) to a (yellow).

This book was found after Michael Crichton died. I wonder if he didn’t try to publish it while he was alive because he knew it wasn’t up to par with his other work. This definitely feels like a cash grab.

Inception (Green)

Calling this movie (Green) isn't enough. I should make a new category for required viewing. If you don't know what (Green) means click here.

It’s hard to write movie reviews for movies that rock. Did you notice that I still hadn’t written one for Toy Story 3 (go see that movie)?

That's because it’s way easier and more fun to point out a movie’s faults then to say what I loved about it.

Inception was my last hope for a good movie. Not just for the summer but for the year. The trailer had me really curious and nervously excited. Could it really live up to the hype?

It could and it did.

I’ve already gone to see it twice. I might even see it one more time in Imax just because this movie would be phenomenal in Imax.

Inception is awesome. A fantastically original story. It’s the kind of sweet story that I wish I had written. It’s the kind of movie people are going to be talking about for years.

It’s about a dream thief named Cobb who goes into peoples dreams to steel their Ideas. That’s called extraction. Inception is the opposite, when you insert an Idea into someone’s mind during their dreams and it’s nearly impossible. You can’t insert a foreign idea into someone’s mind without it’s subconscious turning against you and trying to kill you. But don’t worry when you die in a dream you just wake up…usually.

Confused yet?

Don’t worry. It all works. This movie is loaded with exposition but it is still the most exciting movie of the year. It’s a great example of turning exposition into ammunition.

In fact, the whole first half of the movie is exposition. My brother leaned over to me and whispered, This movie is awesome. It was my second time seeing it and I knew what was coming. They hadn’t even started the job of implanting an idea into someone's mind. I whispered back to him, you haven’t seen anything yet.

By the end there are four different story lines with multiple characters in unique situations, each story is running at a different speed, and what happens in one affects what happens in the others. It’s so complex it’s a miracle that the film makers can pull it off and still make it awesomely entertaining.

My biggest fear when I heard this was a movie about a dream within a dream (it’s no where near to being that simple) I was worried about the ending. If the whole movie turned out to a dream then I was going to be spitting angry.

The ending for this movie is perfect. I won’t spoil it for you but I was surprised that I enjoyed that kind of ending. I would love to story talk it to death but I won’t ruin it for you.

This movie is complicated and it does have a lot of rules to keep track of but it all works. I think anyway. I have a couple questions about the climax but I don't even know what to ask. I'd have to see it one more time to find out if there is a loop hole.

But even if there is the movie is still a must see. And I mean that. You must see this movie. Yesterday I was looking at what movie were coming out in the next little while and I got to next april before I realized there was nothing exciting coming out for a long time. Go see Inception before the movie drought starts.

Plague Ship (Yellow) by Clive Cussler

(Yellow) means this. Only in book form.

There are three different kinds of Clive Cussler books. The Dirk Pitt books, the Kurt Austin books, and the Oregon books. Three series with three different sets of characters (there is some cross over but it’s insignificant).

This is my first Oregon book. I didn’t have any desire to expand into the Clive Cussler world. The Dirk Pitt books and the Kurt Austin books were already so similar that I figured it was just pointless to add another character to the same tired formula.

The formula is this.

Every Clive Cussler book starts out way in the past with some lame ancient mystery. Sometimes more then one mystery. These are always a struggle to read. They are very detailed and their relevance to the rest of the story is very little. For Plague Ship it was almost laughable.

Dirk/Kurt are in a large body of water looking for sunken treasure when they find a someone in distress. The someone changes from book to book but there is always a hot girl involved. They save the hot girl who also happens to be an expert on whatever the villains of that book are cooking up.

The girl helps them through a series of random over detailed usually underwater hardships so that they can get to the villain. The bad guys get more and more far fetched with each book that comes out. Plague Ship is a prime example. I'll get to it later.

The first big event of the book is always the biggest which makes the endings very anticlimactic.

Dirk/Austin are usually beat an inch from their lives by the end of the book. The girl is always there to comfort them and when they end up together she is gone by the next book.

There is always an exposition character who only does exposition. They are the most boring chapters because they just sit around and talk about ocean mysteries. Not as cool as it sounds. Mostly it’s like reading a text book.

That is how to write a Clive Cussler book.

That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy one every now and then. Sometimes I need a mindless action story.

But this Plague Ship book, my goodness. Prepare to suspend your disbelief as I drop a one line synopsis on you.

The bad guys are a group of people who are believe we are breeding ourselves to death so they are going to sterilize half the planet with a virus they found… on Noah’s ark.

I know right.

They don’t get into that stuff heavy until the last third of the book but when they do it slows the book right down. The first 100 pages were a page turner. The last hundred were a struggle to read. Just straight up boring. Mostly because it all revolved around several main characters being in peril and the question was were they going to die or not. I’ve read too many Clive Cussler books to know there was no way he was going to kill a good guy.

But for how horrible the villains were (and I am a firm believer that the antagonist is more important then the protagonist) there were some cool parts to this book.

As I said, this is my first Oregon book and now I know the Oregon books are the most unique in the NUMA world. The Oregon is a high-tech state of the art boat that looks like a piece of trash so it can sneak around the world and carry out it’s missions.

The crew is mostly mercenaries. Going from one job to the other. I thought this was cool at first but then I realized it didn’t mean anything because everyone on that boat has a heart of gold so money isn’t an issue. They always do the right thing, no matter what. A great quality to have but it makes for lame story telling (cause no one is really like that).

The captain is the most unique character. He is a real one legged pirate. But that’s not what makes him unique. He has some crazy prosthetics with hidden compartments that can hold guns and explosives and what not. It's pretty cool.

But the rest of the crew is just toned down versions of Dirk Pitt over and over. There is more of them so the antagonism gets split up between them so it’s not just one guy taking on the world like in every other Clive Cussler book.

There were some exciting chase scenes at the beginning of this book that kept me trapped in the story but it couldn’t be sustained. Just like in past books the most antagonistic part of the book is at the beginning. I kept waiting for a diabolical twist but instead I got the lame plot of sterilizing half the planet.

For this book the highs were entertainingly high and the lows were laughably low.

It averaged out to a normal Clive Cussler adventure.

Don't say the "V" word

By the end of this post the word vampire will be officially retired from my vocabulary. I wont talk about any vampire movies, I won’t talk about vampire books, and when I see people dressed up as classic vampires at Halloween I will pretend that they are just pale people who are overdressed.

It’s going to be a lot of work never using that word again but I’m dedicated.

Twilight (I’m ashamed that word is on my blog) started the “Let’s make vampires lame” campaign but the guy who forced my hand was none other then Big Willie himself.

If you want to read the article of terror click here. But I’ll sum it up for you anyway.

Will Smith plays Cain in the Biblical story of Cain and Able. No wait. It gets worse. There are vampires in this movie.

It doesn’t make sense to me either.

The article doesn’t even say how the vampires will be involved. Does Cain turn into a vampire after he kills Able? That’s ridiculous. Everyone knows that Cain is the modern day Big Foot. It all seems so random. I saw this as someone’s facebook status and I thought it was a joke. I wish it had been a joke.

It’s gotten to the point where the powers that be think it doesn’t matter what the story if you throw vampires into the mix then whatever you are making will be more profitable.

How else could you come to the decision that adding vampires to a bible story would be a good idea?

Now that Vampires are all over the place, now that they have changed from a cool villain to a sparkly attempt at a cash grab, and now that they are dragging werwolves down with them I feel the need to eliminate them from my life permanently.

I will no longer say the “V” word.

Predators (Red)

Ya it’s (Red) but who didn’t see that coming.

Also, (Red) means don’t watch it but if you do plan on watching it anyway I’m just going to say there are SPOILERS AHEAD!

One of the biggest problems with this movie is its level of antagonism peeks in the first act. There are a bunch of people dumped on a planet who are being hunted by aliens who can turn invisible, have heat vision, and laser guns and what not. At first they have no idea what’s even going on. Then they figure out they are being hunted and that no one ever survives. There is no way out of the situation. Bleak. Very high antagonism.

Then every twist in the movie gives them a little more hope. They find a survivor. Suddenly it’s possible to defeat the unbeatable aliens. Then they find out there is a ship. Now they have a way off the planet. Then they find out the aliens don’t get along. Now they have allies.

Ya, I know. Bad things do happen. This is a one-by-one the “good” guys get killed off but that doesn’t do anything for the story and doesn’t really change the level of antagonism either way because everyone knows who’s going to make it to the end.

In a good movie the level of antagonism is supposed to get bigger and bigger not smaller and smaller. Predators starts out with an impossible situation and then clumsily and illogically allows the protagonist to figure out a way to get out.

Kind of.

The worst part is that the movie doesn’t really end. They kill three or four predators (it's hard to keep track of after a while) and then the movie ends. The thing is there are more predators on the way. Early on in the movie the one guy who was able to outsmart the predators and who has been living in hiding for years tells them that when one of the predators dies they figure out how they were defeated and then come back even more powerful.

So I assume that’s what’s going to happen.

The story didn’t really reach a point where everything was solved. There was no absolute irreversible solution to their problem. It just ends. And we are left thinking, “Well wait a sec. They killed a couple Predators and it’s all over? Aren’t there going to be a bunch more coming right away? Why are the credits rolling? Nothing has happened. They are in the same situation they were in at the beginning of the story except they are now covered in sweat and mud.”

And this is a small thing but what the heck was with that song for the credits. I don’t know the name of it but it seems like they forgot they needed a song and just picked the first song that came up on their iTunes. I’m going to go against what Larry David has taught me and give them the benefit of the doubt and assume there is an inside story that I don’t know about.

I’ll be honest. The only reason I watched this movie was to see Topher Grace die a horrible death. By the time it actually happened I just wanted everyone to die. There was no logic to the characters. They just did things that were convenient for exposition.

Also, the predators can turn invisible. How is it possible that even the most BA human can defeat them? They can turn invisible and shoot you from far away. You can’t even hide from them cause they have heat vision. With all these advantages how is it possible that they can still get shanked by a death row inmate? That actually happened by the way.

There aren’t enough good things in this movie for me to recommend that you watch it or even rent it.

Knight and Day (Red)

If you're wondering what (red) means, I'm trying to tell you not to watch this movie. If you need a better explantation click here.

When I go to see a summer action movie with Tom Cruise in it I have certain expectations. One of them is action. The other one is not a bunch of jokes.

And yes I did see the trailer before I saw this movie and yes there are a bunch of jokes in the trailer but I expected a good balance of action and comedy. There was no balance. It was a fantastic disappointment.

This is the structure of this movie.

Each scene started out with some witty banter. They would attempt some jokes, they would try and create some chemistry, the bad guys would come and they would find themselves in an impossible situation from which there is no foreseeable escape. Then Cameran Diaz would get drugged and pass out. The screen would go black and next thing you know they are out of peril and on to the next scene.

Repeat this five or six times and you have the entire movie.

There are two kinds of endings in classically told stories. The protagonist gets the object of desire or they don’t. In summer action movies starring Tom Cruise he always gets what he wants by the end. It’s always a happy ending. We don’t go see these kind of movies cause there is a chance he might fail. We go to see it to see how he does it.

That’s the part of the movie that gets skipped over in Knight and Day.

Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz are surrounded by gunman and there is no possible way for them to escape. Tom randomly druggs Diaz and she passes out. The next scene shows that they some how escaped from the bad guys but we have no idea how. Instead we are left with the thought, “it would have been cool to see how they got out of that impossible situation but I guess I’ll just have to be satisfied with these not-as-clever-as-they-think conversations they are having.”

They are being shot at by an enemy aircraft so they have to run along the beach until they get to the hidden helicopter so they can shoot down the bad guys and run away. Except that Cameron Diaz gets drugged before we can see any of the really cool stuff.

It’s too bad one of the few original stories of the summer is so crappy. There is nothing in this movie worth watching.

The Last Airbender (Yellow)

If you're wondering what the (yellow) thing is all about click here.

The Last Airbender is a bad movie but not so bad that you should never watch it. Just wait for it to come out on DVD.

The boring parts are plentiful. The only parts of the movie I enjoyed were the element bending parts but they can be pretty spaced out. And the space between is filled up with characters talking about things we already knew.

This is the perfect movie to go to if you have a small bladder. You can go to the bathroom multiple times without having to pause the movie; I say pause because you should rent this movie not watch it in the theater. The characters are always talking about what they are doing but they never change what they are doing so they are always talking about the same thing. Over and over.

The acting in this movie is no good. I don’t know anything about acting and I can still tell it’s no good. It looked like the actors were struggling to remember their lines and where their marks were.

But it’s not like they had much to work with. There is zero character development. They try to create an arch for the Avatar but it doesn’t work. They try to create a love story in the final act but it doesn’t work.

The only thing that comes close to working is the fire prince's story but even though that was the strongest character and plot of the movie it still doesn’t work.

The only reason to watch this movie is for the cool fight scenes. And that’s just because they look cool. Don’t spend too much time thinking about why they have to break dance to use their bending powers. If you do you will ruin the only good part of the movie.

This movie only got 8% on Rotten Tomatoes. There is no way this is an 8% movie. It is not the worst movie I have seen this year (that goes to A-Team… so far). I think the main reason this movie got such a bum rap is because everybody likes to hate on M. Knight Shyamalan. This movie is way better then his last few attempts at film making. I'd say it's 30% or 40%.

I enjoyed it enough to want them to make the sequels just so I can see the cancer patient learn to bend more things. Ya, I know, I could just watch the TV show but anime scares me. Their eye’s are way so big and hair is long and pointed in weird directions, constantly wind tousled. Terrifying.

Also, I guess the thing the Avatar fly's around on is cool looking. It's like a cross between the luck dragon from The Never Ending Story and a beaver.

The Saga of Seven Suns, Book 1: Hidden Empire (Yellow) by Kevin J. Anderson

If you are wondering about what that (Yellow) means then click here. I haven't used it for a book review yet but the traffic light system can be applied to anything. My breakfast of Honeycombs this morning was (Green)

So the only reason I bought this book is because it is the first book in a series of seven and it’s spine is bright orange. I saw half a row of bright orange books and decided to stop and check them out. Turns out it was a science fiction series written by Kevin J. Anderson.

Before this book I hadn’t read a Kevin J. Anderson book since I was a kid. It was the Jedi Academy Trilogy and the only thing I remember about it is that I thought it was awesome. I decided I could trust him enough to read the first book in the series. Plus, I was intrigued by the plot description on the back.

Turns out the book was a huge disappointment.

There are some cool things about this book but there are way more bad things.

First bad thing: way too many characters.

For a story like this a lot of characters is necessary. You have humans and these alien allies called Ildiran’s so naturally you will need some characters from each group. But then the humans get even broken down into even smaller groups. The members of the Hansa organization who are kind of bad guys but only to certain people, the Roamers who are a group of space MacGivers who can survive any environment, and the people of Theron who have very interesting skills involving trees. I’ll get more into these people later.

Each of these groups are represented by multiple characters and it seems like none of the characters are more important then the next. In other words, there is no protagonist.

It also makes it hard to even follow the characters, especially the alien ones. Some crazy thing will happen to the alien leader but then you won’t hear from him for a whole bunch of chapters so that by the time you do get back to him you’ve forgotten his whole story line and he becomes less important.

The structure of the book is way off. Too many characters spread out too far. Because there are so many characters it takes forever to get their individual reaction to these awesome event s that are happening. Example:

The book is about an alien race’s reaction to accidental genocide. The aliens are called the hydrogues and they live inside gas giants all over the galaxy. The Hansa accidently destroy a bunch of hydrogues in an experiment to turn a gas giant into a new sun (in the Hansa’s defense no one knew the hydrogues existed).

The accidental genocide happens about twenty or so pages into the book. The hydrogues don’t start attacking people for another 150 pages. That’s a 150 pages of being introduced to a dozen or so new characters.

It doesn’t work.

I’m fine with soft science fiction but there were some things here that even I couldn’t look over. There were people breathing the “air” while mining hydrogen. There is no breathable air in gas giants.

There are other things like this that take away the readers ability to surrender disbelief. I could go into more detail but I don’t want to ruin things for you incase you do decide to read this.

But as lame as some things are in this book there are somethings that I thought were cool.

The space MacGivers, the Roamers, were interesting. Just the way they were able to build something out of nothing was interesting. Too bad the Roamer characters that are featured are way boring and make predictable choices.

The human’s on the planet Theron are also cool. Certain groups on this planet have the unique ability to talk to The World Forrest. They can actually talk to trees. It makes their skin turn green. Not only can they talk to trees but as they spread the trees to other worlds they, who call themselves Green Priest, can talk to each other and relay messages. It a cool idea that adds some uniqueness to this universe.

The last cool thing is these weird insect like robots that are all over the place. There are thousands of them all over but no one knows where they came from. The alien race who built them is long gone. As early humans started exploring the universe they found these robots on random planets. They are mysterious and some people don’t trust them. Their story is interesting and to be honest it’s the only reason I started reading the next book.

Extreem caution when reading this book. It’s not as good as you think but there are good lessons here for you to learn from if you are looking to write your own science fiction book someday.

For starters, Orbit will publish crappy science fiction.