Review: TRUEBLOOD Season 1

True Blood Season 1
DVD box set

My Thoughts:
The entire True Blood Season 1 is a TV serialization of the Sookie Stackhouse series #1, Dead Until Dark book. Click here for my review of Dead Until Dark. There are a few modifications in the TV series which are not in the book and vice versa, but we are expecting that. What is important to me is that the TV show stuck to the spirit of the story in the book as closely as possible and that earned lots and lots of brownie points! I was also kinda hoping that they would edit Sookie, the main protagonist's tendencies to be too stupid to live, with the TV show, which in some cases they did, but not all of it. And that was kind of disappointing. It's the character development which brings the rating for the whole show down to the boots. The Stackhouses are as dim as they come. Well, except the grandmother. However the world building and the cinematic artistry is bang on!! Gotta give the cinematic effects team and the director a lot of kudos for that. The world building and the show might be really good, but I just find stupid protagonists annoying. I would give this TV series the same rating I gave the book, a 3.5 out of 5.

Overall Rating: 3.5 out of 5 cherries


TV Show Trailer:

Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris
Book 1 of the Sookie Stackhouse series
Genre: adult urban fantasy

About Dead Until Dark:

Sookie Stackhouse is a small-time cocktail waitress in small-town Louisiana. She's quiet, keeps to herself, and doesn't get out much. Not because she's not pretty. She is. It's just that, well, Sookie has this sort of 'disability'. She can read minds. And that doesn't make her too dateable. And then along comes Bill: he's tall, dark and handsome - and Sookie can't 'hear' a word he's thinking. He's exactly the type of guy she's been waiting for all her life.

But Bill has a disability of his own: he's a vampire. Worse than that, he hangs with a seriously creepy crowd, with a reputation for trouble - of the murderous kind.

And when one of Sookie's colleagues is killed, she begins to fear she'll be next...

Source: Info in the About Dead Until Dark was taken from the back cover of the paperback edition.

Books In This Series:

Review: THE OBSIDIAN TRILOGY

[image credit: Todd Lockwood]

The Obsidian Trilogy by Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory
Genre: epic fantasy

Retrospective Review:

I'm going to review this trilogy as one because the first two books both ended in cliffhangers which therefore ought not to be read individually anyway. I strongly suggest that you have all three books in this trilogy before starting to read it because you would want to read the next book straight away as soon as you hit the cliffhanger. And let me tell you, you'll have a wonderful reading pleasure waiting for you with this trilogy!! You lucky bastard!

In my case, I had to wait for a year before the second book and two more years after that, before I could read the final book. Despite all the frustration and the fact that I've forgotten the story already save for a vague idea of what the story was anymore after two years, but as soon as I started reading the third book, all my angst and frustrations were forgotten! The story telling quality is simply masterful... carried me away to a totally different world! The world building in fantastic!! A very beautiful architecture which I could totally believe and immerse in.

[image credit: Todd Lockwood]

The characters walked around in my head long after I finished reading the books. The characters have such a strong presence that I may have forgotten their names but I never forgot the feel of the character. How weird is that?! That helped me gap the memory loss between books though. Helped me remember the previous book(s). Very helpful! Not sure whether to attribute that to the authors' character development skills or my own personal memory quirk, I don't know. Either way, I found that the character development is very very good!

And let's not forget the fact that there's a dragon in it too. Me being a dragon geek, love it!

Empirical Evaluation:
Character Development = 5
World Building = 5
Plot = 4
Story  = 4
Ending = 4.5
Story Telling Quality = 5

Overall Rating: 5 out of 5 cherries


The Books In The Obsidian Trilogy:
The Outstretched Shadow by Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory
Book 1 of The Obsidian Trilogy

About The Outstretched Shadow:

In the captivating world conjured by veteran Lackey and classical scholar Mallory (Merlin: The Old Magic) in this first of a high fantasy trilogy, there are three types of magic, each of which has its own rules, limits and variables. But it is the Wild Magic-anathema to Armethalieh, "the Golden City of the Bells," and considered by its residents to be heresy and truly evil-that has the most unusual aspects, for its practitioners must bargain for what they need and pay an often high price for power. Kellen Tavadon, son of Arch-Mage Lycaelon of Armethalieh, has been raised (indoctrinated, actually) to believe that High Magick is the only true magic and that his father and the Council of Mages have the final word. But Kellen isn't so sure. He's always been a bit suspicious of the council's tight control over the city. One day, while playing hooky from his lessons in magery, Kellen finds a set of books about Wild Magic. He knows he shouldn't touch them. To open the books and read them is to court a death sentence, no matter if your father is the Arch-Mage. But Kellen can't resist. And thus, after a bit of a slow start, Kellen sets down a road he never expected to take, on a journey of dire importance to both humans and nonhumans (the latter including elves, unicorns and other enchanting creatures).

Source: Info in the About The Outstretched Shadow was taken from one of the authors' website at http://www.mercedeslackey.com/books/mountain.html on 22/05/2011.

To Light A Candle by Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory
Book 2 of The Obsidian Trilogy

About To Light A Candle:

To Light a Candle is the second book in the Obsidian Mountain trilogy.

In To Light a Candle, the Demon Queen sends her forces against her human and elven enemies, sowing distraction and death. In the human City, the Queen's agents work to divide the Council and foment rebellion among the City's citizens. In the countryside, they target the most vulnerable and valuable---the young Elf Prince and the Wild Mages who might be the Demons' most dangerous enemies.

To his own surprise, young Kellen, once the disappointing son of the great Mage who leads the City's Mage Council, has become a powerful Knight-Mage. Valued for his bravery and his skills as both wizard and warrior, Kellen joins the Elves' war councils. Yet he cannot convince the City of his birth that it is in terrible danger.

Kellen's sister Idalia, a Wild Mage with great healing ability, has pledged her heart to Jermayan, a proud Elven warrior. Someday Idalia will pay a tragic Price for a world-saving work of Wild Magic, but until then, she will claim any joy life can offer her. Jermayan, who has learned much while fighting at Kellen's side and loving the human Idalia, finds that everything changes when he Bonds with a dragon while rescuing the Elf Prince and becomes the first Elven Mage in a thousand years.

Furious at her enemies' success with the dragon, the Demon Queen attacks in force. Light struggles against Dark, like flickering candleflames buried deep in the shadow of Obsidian Mountain.

Source: Info in the About To Light A Candle was taken from one of the authors' website at http://www.mercedeslackey.com/books/mountain2.html on 22/05/2011.

When Darkness Falls by Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory
Book 3 of The Obsidian Trilogy

About When Darkness Falls:

A great working of Wild Magic and High Magic strikes at the heart of the Demon Queen's plots, but the human city, the Golden City of the Bells, falls farther under her sway with each day that passes. And without the City's High Magicians, the Wild Magicians, the Elven Army, and all their allies will surely fall before the onslaught of the Demon Queen's malignant warriors. But not all hope is lost. The Light's young mages, tempered by war, grow ever more powerful. High Mage Cilarnen learns an ancient secret that can make him, for a brief, white-hot time, the greatest mage in the world---unless it kills him. Jermayan, the first Elf-Mage in centuries, has linked with the dragon Ancaladar and rediscovered the swift-as-thought powers of Elven magic, which can reshape mountains and summon lightning from clear skies. Knight-Mage Kellen has molded his troops and the Unicorn Knights into a deadly fighting force. Soon the Elven King and his Commanders put Kellen's magical gifts to their greatest test, in the final battle between the Elves, the humans, and the Demons.

Source: Info in the About When Darkness Falls was taken from one of the authors' website at http://www.mercedeslackey.com/books/mountain3.html on 22/05/2011.

Wishlist: Trance

WISHLIST:
Trance by Kelly Meding
MetaWars series #1

Genre: YA Urban Fantasy
Publication Date: 25 Oct 2011

Desription:

The first in a new series by Kelly Meding, about an X-Men-like group of young people with superpowers who must find a way to work together.

Source: Info in the Description was taken from Goodreads at http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9414014-trance on 08/07/2011.

WW28: BLACKOUT

WW28
A chance to showcase your favourite!

• First you grab our Wicked Wednesday pic.
• Then you grab a book. Turn to page 28. Take the first sentence. And then you post it in your site with a link back to WW28.
• Come back to Cherry Mischievous - WW28 and give us the url of your post (in a comment at a WW28 post) so that other WW28 readers can find your WW28 offering.

WW28 book offering : Blackout by Rob Thurman

Page 28, 1st Sentence:

He was also at least forty.

To put that line a bit more in context, here is the next line:

He'd been a full-grown man and full-grown pervert for a long time now.

About Blackout:

I was alone, and I was lost. I didn’t know where I was; I didn’t know who I was. It doesn’t get more lost than that. Knowing what I knew and not knowing anything else at all, why would I want to be in the darkness where monsters hide?

Because killers hide there, too…

Half-human Cal Leandros has always walked a bloody line between keeping his mortal soul free and clear (sort of) and unleashing the horror of his otherworldly heritage. The one thing that’s always saved him is the memory of his brother, Niko, his friends, and those he loves.

Until now.

Cal wakes up on a beach littered with the recently slaughtered remains of a variety of hideous creatures that were obviously looking for trouble. The fact that he was the one doing the slaughtering doesn’t bother him. The fact that he feels like a natural-born killer doesn’t either. What bothers him is that Cal doesn’t remember Cal anymore…

And he’s not sure he cares.

Source: Info in the About Blackout was taken from the author's website at http://robthurman.net/cal-leandros/blackout/ on 14/09/2010.

Review: QUESTING BEAST

Questing Beast by Ilona Andrews

Genre: science fiction

Stat: short story eBook freebie

About Questing Beast:

On a world far far away, where cute things eat computers and the sky is emerald green, a small team of scientists struggles to save the planet and their own careers by mixing genetic engineering and Arthurian legend. Too bad they had forgotten the first rule of planet exploration: Nature always has the last laugh.

Source: Info in the About Questing Beast was taken from GoodReads at http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8237331 on 01/05/2011.

Review:
This is a short story ebook offered for free by Ilona Andrews from their site at http://www.ilona-andrews.com/books/ebooks/questing-beast-2/ which I downloaded sometime in 2010. For a freebie this was bloody good! The story telling quality as per usual was masterful, as can be expected from any Ilona Andrews work. It takes talent to turn a mundane and weird sci-fi world into an interteresting story which is what happened with this book. If you haven't tried this author's work yet and wanted to sample it before buying, read this story, and I'm pretty sure that you would be digging for more of their work to read at the end of it. It's a wonderful read! My only complaint is that the story is short and there are no more of this series! The end however pointed to possible more books based in this series, so hopefully we'll hear more about the Numerian world sometime in the future. And of course, I love the trogomets! But who doesn't love a fuzzy fur ball who is a sucker for cookies! Which reminds me of other cute furballs, gremlin and garfield.

Emperical Evaluation:
Story telling quality = 5
Character development = 5
Story itself = 4.5
Ending = 4.5
Cover art = 4
Pace = 4

Overall Rating: 4.5 out of 5 cherries


FTC Disclosure:
I downloaded this ebook for free from Ilona Andrews' site at http://www.ilona-andrews.com/books/ebooks/questing-beast-2/ in 2010. Thank you!!