Book Reviews: The Magician's Apprentice

The Magician's Apprentice is a prequel, from one of my favorite authors, Trudi Canavan. It's written as ancient histroy to her Black Magician trilogy. The Black Magician trilogy concerns the goings on in the Magician's Guild in the land of Kyralia. The Magician's Apprentice is set long before, and is about how the Guild was set up, and about how one young apprentice discovered the secrets of healing magic, which had eluded magicians for so long. There is also a third important character, Stara, a young woman from Sachaka, Kyralia's enemy. In Sachaka women are very much second class citizens, and so Stara runs away and starts an organisation called the Traitors. She wants to set up a women's sanctuary, but in later books the organisation has also become guerilla fighters and assassins. As a prequel it works well. When it's set there is no Guild for educating young magicians and instead magicians each take on an apprentice and teach them individually. But of course everybody teaches slightly different things. The way the magicians come to the conclusion that setting up a guild to share knowledge would be a good idea is convincing, and the way the young magician, Tessia, slowly discovers the secrets of healing magic is very good too. There's a properly nasty and threatening villain, Takado, who drives the plot forward nicely.

I do feel, though, that it falls into a trap, that plenty of prequels do, of being more concerned with fitting into the larger narrative than with working well on its own. The main story could have been more exciting, and there's a shocking bit in the epilogue where, with NO warning, you find that in subsequent years Tessia's master was assassinated. I know the epilogue was trying to sound like a history book, but I could have done without that bit.

Songs: Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm

A bit of 90s alternative today:

Show Reviews: Kiss Me Kate

I'd never seen this one before. It's a musical about a group of actors putting on a musical version of Tha Taming of the Shrew, with music and lyrics by Cole Porter. The Shakespeare characters are somewhat mirrored in the personalitites of the actors. I enjoyed this show. The dancing was brilliant and there were some very funny and catchy songs, including Brush up your Shakespeare and I'm Always True To You in My Fashion. The costumes were also great and the actors were very good too. However, it is an old-fashioned musical and there are some bits that aren't palatable to a modern audience, such as the way the leading male treats his ex-wife, including spanking her on stage to teach her to respect him. The end is also a deus ex machina which I quite like, but I know some people think they're silly. Still, if you can think of the show as a product of its time rather than considering it from a modern point of view it's very enjoyable. 

Here's a clip

Songs: Rain King

I love Counting Crows:

Movie Reviews: Solo

Solo: A Star Wars Story is the newest offering from the new batch of Star Wars films. Despite reviewing well, it's not done very well in the cinemas. It had a lot of problems during filming, including the lead actor, Alden Ehrenreich, needing an acting coach due to bad performance. They also changed director half way through filming due to creative differences and loads of it had to be reshot. I think these stories, coupled with The Last Jedi not being very good, and the last Star Wars film only coming out a few months ago put people off going to see it. Or perhaps it's a wider problem with the cinema industry in general. Our cinema has halfed its prices lately to encourage more people to come in. It's great for us, of course, but also a little concerning. All that being said, I did enjoy the film. The acting coach clearly did his job well, and I enjoyed all the performances, especially Donald Glover as young Lando. The story works well for the most part and there are some cool scenes, like a futuristic train heist and the surprise return of an underused character from the prequels. Speaking of underused characters, this film has one too. An underused crime boss centipede lady who's sensitive to sunlight. She was cool, for her minute of screen time. There was also a funny droid, as usual, this one voiced by a woman and very into rights and freedoms for droids. So that's something new. I do feel like the end had too many twists though. One would have been fine, not the six or seven we were thrown. I also think that this film didn't particularly look like a Star Wars film. I suppose it could be argued that this doesn't particularly matter in a wide galaxy, with lots of different things going on. I also wasn't too keen on what they did with the Kessel Run. It just seemed like what they did with it didn't particularly fit with what we already knew about it, and as if they just wanted to include it for the sake of covereing everything we know about Han Solo, rather than because it really fits into the story. But on the whole I enjoyed it and would recommend it. I think it's a shame a lot of the fans didn't come out to watch it.

Songs: Blown Rose

A very English song today:

Movie Reviews: Deadpool 2

I wasn't all that keen on the idea of a Deadpool sequel. I loved the first film. It was funny, filthy, full of great characters, great soundtrack and above all, ORIGINAL. Despite being a part of the Marvel universe, it was genuinely different to the other samey Marvel superhero films. It was a bit of surprise hit, and I was worried that the sequel just wouldn't be as good. I thought someone would realise that they could make money from it, and ruin it by trying to tone it down to appeal to a wider audience and change the feel of it with a big budget and an experienced director.

But I was wrong! It was still rude, crude and hilarious, with another great soundtrack! I think I still prefer the first one, but for a sequel it was great! It introduced some great new characters while being true to the spirit of the first one. The main problem is that very early in the film throws the auidence a massive curve ball that I didn't like. But they fix it at the very end of the film. So that's alright. Mostly. Anyway, good film.