The Kaiju Preservation Society – by John Scalzi
Tags:book covers, Book Reviews, Books
If you’ve been around the internet long enough, you’re sure to eventually see the image that shows that Harry Potter is really just Star Wars with a fresh coat of paint, which is just a modern take on the Hero’s Journey, which is been a story told since stories could be told. Kaiju Preservation Society is no different, though I feel that until a certain point in the story it’s going to be more familiar than just a mythological story structure, as I’m pretty sure if you put the outline of Scalzi’s breakout book “Old Man’s War” and put it up against KPS’s, there’s a lot of common elements:
Guy is at the end of a major point in his life and is recruited to do a mysterious thing.
Guy goes through a mysterious process.
A huge story twist that absolutely rocks how we understand the universe is presented early.
Guy saves the day a few times.
Pepper in the traditional Scalzi snark and pop culture references and there’s more than I could honestly take here, and you get a fun story with familiar elements that made me feel good about spending my time reading the book. That being said, Scalzi used to be my #1 favorite author, but I think he’s just in my top five now. I say “just” like it’s no big deal, but his stories aren’t hitting me the way they used to. Back when I first read Old Man’s War about 15 years ago, I was just getting started on military science fiction and was catching up on the big names that had published notable work in the genre, OMW came out and blew my socks off and the franchise itself was a fun one to read. I’ve become more enamored with the military scifi and I Scalzi has mostly abandoned the genre. To be clear though, I’m happy about that, because he’s always going to be on my radar now, and what if he starts publishing something in a genre that I’m not currently interested in and it turns out I should be?
Final take: this was good to read, a bit heavy on the pop culture references, but I’d love to read another book in this universe.
Shadow of the Colossus
The second half of the Ico & Shadow collection, this was the stronger game right up until the final colossus, which was so out of step with the rest of the game that I nearly gave up on it. Shadow was released a full four years after ICO, but if you told me they were released in the same month, I’d believe it. The world looks similar, without much color, and neither game let the story get in the way of fantastic puzzles that often frustrated me to the point that I felt super dumb when I did finally figure them out. The main characters also seem to be the same people, just one has horns and the other…well he doesn’t until he does. They both even feature the same villainous smoke creatures that come out of the floor!
As I mentioned, this is a solid game that I was actively recommending to my wife, but that last level commits the cardinal sin of changing the game play style at the very last moment without rhyme or reason. In fact, I actually think there were several bugs on that final colossus, the most alarming of which was that two of the ‘critical points” never showed up. I ultimately had to look up the solution and it didn’t make me feel good about not knowing how to do something that wasn’t being hinted to at all.
Maybe the ps4 remake fixes these errors, but because of how this one ended, I can’t recommend it at all.
multi-calvin
Land of the Dead
Tags:Movie Posters, Movie Reviews, Movies, Zombies
There’s a Tuba zombie, a gas station zombie, and other zombies that have started to remember their lives before they were zombies and they’re starting to live out their lives again. It’s about as weird and silly as you’d expect. The highlight of how silly the movie takes itself is the soldier that uses a skateboard and has headphones on while on the look out for zombies.
I remember seeing this is the theater back in 2005 and not being impressed with it, and I’m still not all that enamored with it.
