Book Review | The Wind Through the Keyhole by Stephen King

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Summary from Goodreads

Roland Deschain and his ka-tet—Jake, Susannah, Eddie, and Oy, the billy-bumbler—encounter a ferocious storm just after crossing the River Whye on their way to the Outer Baronies. As they shelter from the howling gale, Roland tells his friends not just one strange story but two…and in so doing, casts new light on his own troubled past.

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Published in 2012, The Wind Through the Keyhole by Stephen King is part of his popular and acclaimed Dark Tower series. Written after the series’ completion, this novel takes place between The Dark Tower IV: Wizard & Glass and The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla. The novel, apparently meant to fill in a noticeable gape between the two entries, explores some more of Roland’s personal history before embarking upon his quest, as well as expanding upon the lore of Mid-World.Read More »

My Revelation about Resident Evil

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ChrisJill

While actually getting a lot of things right, Resident Evil: Revelations stands as a testament to a lot of what’s become wrong with the series. I recently completed the Nintendo 3DS version of the game, and mechanically it is quite well made. It follows the gameplay model of Resident Evil 4 and on the New Nintendo 3DS it feels even better thanks to the addition of the C-Stick. The game also does a decent job of injecting some survival horror back into the series, with interesting new creature designs, claustrophobic environments, and fairly limited resources.Read More »

A Mature Zelda Game Needs Balance

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Dead Hand by Harangon

With E3 just around the corner and Nintendo dedicating its presence to the next Legend of Zelda game, I thought I’d talk about some thoughts I’ve been having on the series lately.

I’ve started playing The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword for the first time, a game that I’m late getting to, but remember a lot of the buzz around its release. It’s had me thinking about the various visual/tonal styles the Zelda series has had over the last several console iterations. Since the departure from the more realistic style in Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask to the cell-shaded cartoony visuals of Wind Waker, people have been clamouring for a “serious” or “mature” looking Zelda game. For some reason or another Twilight Princess came up a little short for people — some even feeling the game was underrated in its time — and the marriage of the cartoony style and this “mature” style in Skyward Sword did not seem beloved either.Read More »

Book Review | Star Wars: Lords of the Sith by Paul S. Kemp

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Summary from Goodreads

When the Emperor and his notorious apprentice, Darth Vader, find themselves stranded in the middle of insurgent action on an inhospitable planet, they must rely on each other, the Force, and their own ruthlessness to prevail.

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Published in 2015, Lords of the Sith by Paul S. Kemp is one of the new canon Star Wars novels, taking place between the films Revenge of the Sith and the novel Tarkin. Set on and around the planet Ryloth, the story focuses on the relationship between Darth Vader and the Emperor, as well as the Free Ryloth Movement led by Cham Syndulla — a recurring character from the Clone Wars series — who plot to overthrow the Empire by assassinating Darth Vader and the Emperor in one fell swoop.Read More »

Movie Review | Captain America: Civil War

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Captain America: Civil War, directed by Anthony and Joe Russo, is the third film in the Captain America series and the latest addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Disagreement over the Sokovia Accords, which would have the Avengers controlled and overseen by a United Nations panel, fractures the team to two opposing sides, one led by Steve Rogers and the other by Tony Stark. When Steve’s old friend Bucky, the Winter Soldier, resurfaces as public enemy number one, he must fight against these new restrictions in order to protect his friend.Read More »

Book Review | The Lost Time Accidents by John Wray

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Haunted by a failed love affair and the darkest of family secrets, Waldemar ‘Waldy’ Tolliver wakes one morning to discover that he has been exiled from the flow of time. The world continues to turn, and Waldy is desperate to find his way back—a journey that forces him to reckon not only with the betrayal at the heart of his doomed romance but also the legacy of his great-grandfather’s fatal pursuit of the hidden nature of time itself.

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Released in February of this year, John Wray’s The Lost Time Accidents is a story about a family’s obsession with the nature of time. Narratively framed by Waldy Tolliver, who has found himself “exiled from time,” the novel tells the history of numerous generations of his family as written by him, his intended audience being his former lover Mrs. Haven.

The Lost Time Accidents, or more simply “the Accidents,” are cryptic words on the final page of notes Waldy’s great-grandfather Ottokar Toula wrote on the day he died, a day he supposedly learned something revolutionary about time itself. This final page was the only one recovered, propelling his sons and their descendants down a path to understand what he’d discovered.Read More »

Star Wars & Meaningful Side-Stories

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At this point, there’s no denying how much we seem to love side-stories and prequels to series and franchises we know and love. Whether it is Better Call Saul spinning off from Breaking Bad, The Wind Through the Keyhole filling a gap between books in the Dark Tower series, or Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them giving us background on the world of Harry Potter, it would seem we can’t get enough.

I’m personally fine with them, for the same reasons as many others: we get to spend more time in these worlds with these characters. What does sometimes bother me though is a side-story that seems to exist for its own sake. The importance of a prequel or side-story to me is that it adds something. Most the time the main series works as a cohesive story all on its own, so a side-story had best add something that expands my understanding of what was going on and who these characters were, or explore a detail in the world that was a smaller piece of the big picture.Read More »

TV Series Review | Daredevil Season Two

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Set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), Daredevil season two continues the story of Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox), a blind lawyer who fights crime as the hero Daredevil in the Hell’s Kitchen neighbourhood of Manhattan, New York City. This season sees him crossing paths with Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal), a lethal vigilante that goes by the name The Punisher, as well as the return of Matt’s former lover Elektra Natchios (Élodie Yung), who was only briefly mentioned in season one.

I’ve heard criticism for the first season in the year since it came out, discussing how it dragged on a little too much and certain characters didn’t quite hit the mark, among other things. While I feel more positively about it than those critics, its weaknesses became more apparent to me as I watched season two. Not without its own problems, the second season of Daredevil presents a great story that builds upon what was established in season one, taking the show to greater heights.Read More »