Month: August 2016

Coverage of Salt Lake Comic Con 2016

It’s that time of year again (that time being all the time, it seems). Where 120,000 attendees will come out of the woodwork for Salt Lake Comic Con.

As always I will be attending the convention and checking out the panels and reporting back to you.

This year sees the introduction of the what I’m calling super attendance panels in the Vivinent Arena, allowing up to 20,000 participants to see Mark Hamill and William Shatner. In the past, the Grand Ballroom within the Salt Lake Convention Center was the largest panel space available, offering around 5000 seats. Whereas in the past people have had to stand in line for hours and sometimes still not get in to a particularly popular guest panel, the expectation is that anyone wishing to attend either of those panels should be able to.

The list of attendees is very broad (a full list can be seen here). If you have questions you might want addressed or specific celebrities or fandoms, please see my meta question. If they attend the press conference or I attend their panel, I might get a chance to ask them something.

Salt Lake Comic Con runs from Thursday September 1st through Saturday September 3rd.

The Rise of the Red Shadow – Prequel to the Book of Deacon Trilogy by Joseph Lallo Review

The rise of the red shadow

As promised, here is the review of the prequel to The Book of Deacon Trilogy and all I can say is that it is one of those rare things. A prequel that is leagues better than the original series. However much I may have enjoyed the Deacon series I enjoyed Rise of the Red Shadow more.

In this novel we follow Lian as he becomes the famed assassin that we all knew from the original series. We get a brilliant view into the history of the story as well as a great action and emotion packed set up for one of the best characters in the series.

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The Book of Deacon trilogy by Joseph Lallo (spoilers)

The Book of Deacon series covers

So I have just finished the Book of Deacon Trilogy by Joseph Lallo. All in all I enjoyed it hugely. It was a nice quiet light fantasy with all the favorite magical elements, Dark, Light, Grey, Elemental, a little bit of Healing and some scary crystals and really bad dudes. I feel that it was a good solid trilogy that makes a nice filler between heavy series or just a nice holiday series when you don’t want to think too much. You can just read the story and let the events unfold in front of you. There were some issues with the series but I will get into that in a little bit!

The characters are all mostly likable (Ether being the exception) and even though the bad guys are truly evil, one can’t really hate them. They are all simple characters that are easy to understand (maybe a little to simple but…) and in the case of Myranda and Deacon, easy to get behind. You feel for her point of view about the war and about what it has done to her homeland. This being the driving factor for her as a Chosen.

Personally I rather liked Leo/Lian, he was for me the most well drawn character and the one that I felt that the series could easily have been based more on (on a side note I am looking forward to the prequel Rise of the Red Shadow as it follows Lian). He was certainly the most complex character, with his past as a slave and career as a famed assassin turned reluctant hero.

But I may be a little ahead of myself! I have not even told you what the series is about… shame on me! Let me put that right, right now.

There are two countries, the Northern Alliance and Tressor. They have been at war for about a hundred and fifty years… During that time things have gotten a little out of hand with evil beings from another set of worlds having come through a portal and slowly setting themselves up to take over this world as well. The only issue is the Chosen, Five heroes that were touched by the gods and made for the purpose of protecting the world. So the story starts as we follow the Chosen as they find each other an slowly all agree about what needs to be done. We have have Ivy, Myn, Leo/Lian, Ether and Myranda.

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Fant4stic: A Review

I originally wrote this review earlier this year, but have been inspired to post it by our latest Movie Night.

Loosely based on the Marvel characters of the same name, 2015’s Fantastic Four is a bizarrely dark version of their origin story. The film marks Fox’s third attempt at the franchise, and the 2015 reboot manages to fail even more than the first two. Fantastic Four is 100 minutes of boredom and poor creative decisions.

Fantastic-Four-2015-Movie-Poster-Wallpapers
Alternative names: “Fantastic Bore,” Fantastic Snore,” “Fail-tastic Four,” “Not-a-Single-Fan-tastic Four,” “Fantastic Fourgotten” and “Terrible Piece of Trash Movie.”

The film begins with Reed Richards, played as a child by Owen Judge, being mocked for his scientific aspirations. This is the film’s best part, as there are no obvious plot-holes or cringe-worthy creative decisions. Additionally, Richards’ flying car plans are a nice reference to the original comics.

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