MOVIE REVIEW: Coco

written by David Steffen

Coco is the newest adventure/comedy animated film from the ever-popular moviemakers Disney/Pixar, released in November 2017. The movie tells the story of Miguel, a young Mexican boy who is an aspiring musician in a family where music has been forbidden since Miguel’s great-great-grandfather abandoned his family to pursue his music career. Miguel idolizes the legendary musician Ernesto de la Cruz.

Miguel is determined to enter the music competition on the Day of the Dead (the one day of the year when the dead are allowed to come back from the other side to visit their living relatives, as long as those relatives hang photographs of them in their honor), when his grandmother discovers his guitar and smashes it. Still determined, he breaks into the tomb of Ernesto de la Cruz to steal the guitar enshrined there. Stealing from the dead on the Day of the Dead curses him to be sent to the land of the dead (with his stray dog friend Dante tagging along) where only his dead relatives can free him back to the land of the living.

While there he meets all of the dead members of his family (all of the dead people are skeletons) and their animal spirit guides, seeks out Ernesto de la Cruz, as part of his quest to return home to his family.

Pixar is easily one of my favorite moviemakers, and Coco is in the upper end of Pixar’s movies. It’s a wonderful, enjoyable movie, lots of laughs, lots of fun action and dramatic moments, the main character and his doggy sidekick are very lovable, and his family are relatable as well, even when they’re also infuriating. And, true to Pixar form, it made me cry. Highly recommended!

MOVIE REVIEW: The Last Jedi

written by David Steffen

The Last Jedi is Episode VIII of the main number Star Wars series, picking up soon after the events of The Force Awakens, and with many of the same characters as well as some new ones. Rey has just arrived at Luke Skywalker’s secluded hideout to ask for training. The First Order has broken the New Republic, so that all that’s left of the republic is very limited resources and people, and the First Order has taken over rule of much of the inhabited planets. Kylo Ren continues to be a main figurehead of the First Order, even as young and inexperienced as he is, and he answers to Supreme Leader Snoke, his Sith master.

I quite enjoyed this latest entry in the Star Wars series, probably one of my favorite installments yet, in large part because it builds on the fun and adventure and strong characters of the previous versions, but it plays with expectations in interesting ways. We have all been trained by past movies to expect that certain plot elements will be present, and when they’re present they will invariably turn out a particular way. I’m not terribly opposed that style, especially for a movie like Star Wars that’s primarily meant to be fun and exciting, but at the same time it is refreshing to have those expectations played with. I loved what they did with the Rey/Luke interaction, there were lots of fun epic battles, I loved what they did with the Rey/Keylo interaction, and I particularly loved the new character Rose Tico, a rebel maintenance worker who befriends Finn. It was great to see Leia back, even though I was waiting to see how they were going to handle the story given the death of Carrie Fisher.

One thing that surprised me was that it seemed like there was a lot more comedy in this volume than in previous movies in the series, which I found a pleasant surprise.

I have heard some people say they didn’t like the movie for this reason or for that reason, usually citing plausibility reasons. You can like or dislike a movie for whatever reason you like, but I admit I find citing plausibility as a reason for disliking The Last Jedi. The entire series is based on implausibilities. Laser swords. Planet-destroying weapons. Fatal design flaws in planet-destroying weapons that could’ve been prevented with a vent cover or a 90-degree angle in a vent system. The plausibility issues are a Star Wars tradition. As long as there’s lots of good characters and action and fun, I’ll forgive a lot of plausibility issues.

I would highly recommend seeing the movie.

Anime Review: Classroom of the Elite

classroomoftheelite

Classroom of the Elite has some nice ideas, but swings wildly in execution. The premise is that Japan has set up a super elite school where every graduate is guaranteed to be accepted to the college of their choice. Though students are not allowed to leave their entire high school career and communication is cut off with the outside, the living facilities are top notch (there’s even a sizeable mall on campus) and every student is given a budget to live on, starting with 100,000 points (the equivalent of 100,000 yen or $900) to pay for their first month’s expenses.

Students are judged as a classroom, based on merit, and points are awarded at the start of each month. Otherwise they are free to do as they like. Several of the first year students of Class D fritter away that first month’s worth of money with the happy expectation that they will get the same amount next month. Others fall asleep in class once it becomes clear that their teacher won’t say a word if they do.

Naturally, this system is not as kind to the students as they initially take it for. Most of the class is close to broke by the start of the second month and not only that, but they’ve collectively failed their exam so badly that they are awarded zero points for the next month’s living expenses. They won’t starve, there are free hand-outs for students with no points, but they won’t be able to buy anything worthwhile, and students who fall too far behind will be expelled. Their instructor reiterates that they must earn their points through merit, and makes it clear to them that anything can be purchased at the school with enough points.

And that kicks off the series. It’s a cutthroat competition between the first year Classes A through D as they struggle to either climb or remain at the top. (Unlike American high schools, where students change classes with every subject, Japanese classrooms are static.) None of the classes are fully aware of the rules of the school, but they are encouraged to compete against one another and naturally Class D ranks at the bottom.

The protagonist is Kiyotaka Ayanokoji, who initially looks like an introverted guy who’s terrible at making friends, and I was disappointed he wasn’t as lame as he appeared to be. There are a lot of protagonists who are supposed to be the “everyman” but Kiyotaka was fun because he lacks the earnestness of a lot of those characters. Instead we had an apathetic everyman who figured he should at least try to make a good first impression to his new classmates and ended up giving himself the blandest introduction possible.

I liked that!

But Kiyotaka has a hidden history the anime doesn’t fully get into, and the upshot is that he’s actually really smart, a great manipulator of people, and probably should be in Class A except that he manufactured his scores on his entrance exam to get himself put in Class D.

We don’t know anything about what the hell Kiyotaka’s actual plans are, even by the end of the series, but if you like watching a guy subtly outsmarting other people, he’s not a bad pick. His bland facade allows him to get away with things because most people don’t suspect anything from him and he’s very good at deflecting credit on to other people.

I ended up liking this version of Kiyotaka as well, but he doesn’t have much of a character arc because of how the anime chooses to present him. Fortunately, secondary protagonist Suzune Horitaka does.

At first she’s a prickly character too haughty to get involved with her classmates. In fact she’d rather the worst of them drop out because she wants to rise to Class A, and her current classmates aren’t going to cut it. But gradually she comes around to believing that she should look out for her classmates and that she can’t do everything by herself.

Class D is filled with the school’s miscreants and all are deficient in some manner, and not necessarily in discipline and study habits. The fact Suzune is there at all points at some flaw in herself, which she is reluctant to acknowledge.

Since both Suzune and Kiyotaka are the cunning ones out of the class, most of the series involves the two of them working together to outsmart the students of other classes and/or save their fellow classmates. Though Suzune is sharp and dominates the earlier episodes, she’s not on Kiyotaka’s level. The more of his backstory comes out, the more apparent it is that Kiyotaka is really the one in control.

I haven’t talked too much about the plot, and that’s mostly because it’s uneven. The good parts, the outsmarting other students, are really good, with an incredible amount of scheming going into the setup for the final episode. But when it’s not operating at peak, it’s usually in a valley, and the worst offender is the pool episode that literally has nothing else to do with the story. I usually can put up with a filler fanservice episode, but episode 7 was so mind-numbing puerile I almost skipped ahead. (The only reason I didn’t was due to fear of missing something important. But there isn’t anything, so skip away!)

Classroom of the Elite is based on a series of novels, and while they haven’t been translated into English, you can guess where at least one of the novel breaks is, since the last four episodes are clearly a contained story arc and there are previous episodes that are similarly clumped. (The pool filler probably exists because they needed to pad the run to avoid starting another book they couldn’t complete.) From a pacing perspective that makes things a little weird as there’s no real season finale, so much as the culmination of a story arc.

Also, because the novel series is very much ongoing, we don’t get a lot of answers. We learn a little more about Kiyotaka as a person, but the school year is not even half over, Class D has made some progress but is still ranked lower than Class C, and everyone else is still scheming. The last episode is a high point, but would be more palatable as a season break rather than an ending without any guarantee that there will be future episodes.

This series has some good moments and a nice concept, particularly for those who like cutthroat scheming by teenagers, but it’s difficult to recommend on account of its lack of resolution and general unevenness. If it eventually has a second season it might be able to pull itself together into something remarkable, but without a way for the audience to continue following the story it’s just unsatisfying.

Number of Episodes: 12

Pluses: excellent scheming and rule manipulation, Kiyotaka is an cunning mastermind, nice worldbuilding

Minuses: no resolution, quality of episodes swings wildly, the pool episode is a waste of time that has nothing to do with the rest of the series

Classroom of the Elite is currently streaming at Crunchyroll (subtitled) and Funimation (dubbed). Funimation has licensed this for eventual retail distribution in the US.

laurietom
Laurie Tom is a fantasy and science fiction writer based in southern California. Since she was a kid she has considered books, video games, and anime in roughly equal portions to be her primary source of entertainment. Laurie’s short fiction has been published in Galaxy’s Edge, Strange Horizons, and the Intergalactic Medicine Show.

Fall 2017 Anime First Impressions

I’m running late with this season’s impressions. Unlike last summer, which was fairly lackluster, fall had a number of new anime series I wanted to check out, including what is becoming one of my favorites ever, so I think it’s still worth bringing attention to these, even though the season is almost over!

As usual, I look for two to three series to keep me entertaining throughout the season and this fall wasn’t hard to choose from.

The Ancient Magus Bride

ancientmagusbride

Why I Watched It: This is the most buzzworthy show of the season, about a lonely teenage girl who auctions herself to the highest bidder only to discover the man who has purchased her is a magus with the head of a beast, who takes her for his apprentice.

What I Thought: It was gorgeous to look at, but I wasn’t entirely sold by the first episode. Though Chise has obviously been troubled throughout her life due to being an orphan who sees supernatural creatures that most people can’t, I still didn’t feel connected enough with her to understand her pain to the point that she decides it’s better that someone other than her is in control of her life. Elias is interesting since he is clearly not human, but his own mysteries aren’t covered in the first episode. Also, it’s just a bit creepy that one of the reasons he bought her is that he would like to marry her later, assuming she’s interested.

Verdict: I might watch later. I have a feeling this will pick up in an episode or two, now that the main characters and their living arrangements have been established, but at least for the start of the season there’s other stuff I’d prefer following.

Where to find stream: Crunchyroll (subtitled) and Funimation (dubbed, subscription required)

Code:Realize ~Guardian of Rebirth~

coderealize

Why I Watched It: Based on my favorite otome game, Code:Realize is an adventure/romance set in 19th century steampunk London. Cardia lives isolated in the manor where her father left her because she is a poisonous monster whose body melts everything she touches, until one day the queen’s men find her and she is rescued by the dashing gentleman thief, Arsène Lupin.

What I Thought: I was a little concerned about the animation style going in and it still has an odd airbrushed look to it that bothers me, but the adaptation itself is on point and actually flows better than the Chapter 1 in the original game, even though a lot of things are rearranged or cut to quickly get Cardia integrated with her new companions. The show doesn’t shy away from Cardia’s potentially graphic flesh melting abilities and it shows enough to get the point across without entirely sugar-coating how lethal she can be. There are still a lot of questions left at the end of the episode, but I think it’s enough to be a satisfying appetizer for anyone looking for a steampunk fantasy.

Verdict: I’ll be watching. I likely would be anyway even if it turned out as a lesser incarnation of what we got, but to my relief this episode is actually good. Cardia might seem lackluster as a protagonist right now, but assuming they stick true to the spirit of the game we’ll see her grow over the course of the series.

Where to find stream: Crunchyroll (subtitled) and Funimation (dubbed, subscription required)

Juni Taisen: Zodiac War

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Why I Watched It: I don’t like the art style of this one, but I heard about how each episode is from the POV of a different character in the death game. As a narrative trick it’s an interesting conceit, because it prevents the audience from knowing who’s going to make it to the end of the series. And admittedly, I’m partial to stories about deadly games. This one is themed around warriors who each take a name of an animal from the Chinese zodiac.

What I Thought: The premise is that there are twelve families who once every twelve years send a representative of their family to fight in the Juni Taisen (literally: Twelve War). Boar is our first POV character and her father won the last one. Each of the combatant’s swallows a poisoned gem at the start of the competition that will kill them within twelve hours. The winner has to collect all twelve gems and then will be given the antidote as well as the fulfillment of any wish they have. It’s not really clear why every family participates or how they benefit since the wish goes to the individual, but if you just want a killing game with sick rules and hyper competent combatants this dishes it up in spades.

Verdict: I’ll probably be watching. Honestly, with two death game series this season it’s a toss up between this and King’s Game to see which I’m going to stick with or if I’ll manage both. Boar’s backstory was very nicely built and I assume later episodes will similarly build out the rest of the cast.

Where to find stream: Crunchyroll (subtitled) and Funimation (dubbed, subscription required)

King’s Game

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Why I Watched It: The manga version of this has been on my radar for a while (the source novel has not been translated), making this the second death game anime I’m checking out these season. The unwilling players of the King’s Game receive text messages demanding that they complete an action, and gradually the demands become more and more outlandish.

What I Thought: Unusually for a horror anime, our protagonist knows a lot about what’s going on. Nobuaki is actually the lone survivor of a previous King’s Game and he transfers to a new high school where he’s quickly ostracized by the rest of the class when a new game starts up. He knows that everyone who disobeys the King’s orders will die and that it is a supernatural phenomenon rather than a human being, but nobody else believes him, at least initially. I’m curious how this will play out though, because the end of the episode makes such an impression that it feels more like what aren’t they going to do to stay alive?

Verdict: I’ll probably be watching. There are some things that don’t make sense, like why nobody knows about the previous King’s Game (even if it wasn’t written down as due to supernatural causes, the violent and bizarre deaths of all but one student in a class should have been the stuff of national headlines), but I’m curious about how a more knowledgeable protagonist might change the formula on how to survive.

Where to find stream: Crunchyroll (subtitled) and Funimation (dubbed, subscription required)

Kino’s Journey: The Beautiful World

kinosjourney

Why I Watched It: Kino’s Journey is based on a long running novel series about a wandering adolescent kid and their talking motorcycle Hermes. Each episode Kino arrives in a new country with new experiences to be had. This is not its first adaptation, and I’ve heard it’s good, so I wanted to see for myself.

What I Thought: Without any preamble, this episode starts with Kino already on the road. They meet up with another traveler who tells them about a nearby country where it’s legal to kill people, and undeterred, they proceeds to visit the country as part of their ongoing journey. Of course, the truth about the town and it’s willingness to kill is the crux of the episode, and Kino leaves unharmed to go on another journey later. On a translation note though, the first episode has character to refer to Kino’s gender as male, but this may have been a translation mistake due to Kino’s age and unisex outfit, since the dialogue itself doesn’t use gender pronouns in Japanese. The previous Kino anime series referred to Kino as female, but that may have been a different extrapolation. It’s entirely possible that Kino’s gender is simply left to the audience to decide.

Verdict: I might watch later. I think I would have loved this show in middle school (the nuance and violence level is probably too high for elementary school), since it features an independant pre-teen who gets to travel all over the place with their trusty motorcycle buddy, a pair of guns, and nobody bats an eye. Unfortunately there’s a lot of other stuff this season that’s more to my taste, but I think this will be an excellent pick for a lot of people.

Where to find stream: Crunchyroll (subtitled)

Recovery of an MMO Junkie

mmojunkie

Why I Watched It: The titular junkie is a 30-year-old adult woman, which is not what I expected for a series of this name, but at the same time, I think that’s fantastic, as women are capable of being MMO junkies as much as men (says the former MMO guild leader in me). I’m a little leery that it might lean too hard on stereotypes, but we’ll see!

What I Thought: I did not expect this to be a romantic comedy. After recently becoming unemployed, Moriko gets back into gaming and joins a new MMORPG. Her male fighter avatar Hayashi quickly meets a female healer named Lily who helps her get acquainted with the game and they hit it off, becoming good friends. Though she probably doesn’t know yet (since it’s an online game), it’s clear that Lily is played by a man who lives in the same area as her, and they briefly cross paths while getting ready for their Christmas Eve “date” online. I really like the touches that feel like the characters are actually players in a game. They talk about getting home after work, the guildmaster has to worry about potential drama because two guild members are having romantic issues, and the game has relatable silly parts like taking on monsters that are too high a level or accidentally running away because the player hit the wrong button.

Verdict: I’ll be watching. I like that the writing feels like it was done by someone who has spent a lot of time in an MMO and that the main two characters are crossplaying, since a lot of anime seem to forget that a fair number of the “men” online are actually played by women (the reverse being less surprising).

Where to find stream: Crunchyroll (subtitled) and Funimation (dubbed, subscription required)

BOOK REVIEW: All Together Dead by Charlaine Harris

written by David Steffen

All Together Dead is a romance/mystery/horror novel from 2007, the seventh in the Sookie Stackhouse series of novels by Charlaine Harris (which is the basis of the HBO show True Blood). The previous books are all reviewed here earlier on the Diabolical Plots feed.

Sookie is invited to a national vampire summit as part of Queen Sophie-Anne of Louisiana’s entourage. Sophie-Ann knows of Sookie’s mindreading abilities and wishes to user her ability to give her an advantage in expected power struggles within the vampire hierarchy. Sophie-Anne stands accused of murdering her husband (during the events of the last book) and one of the events happening at the summit is her trial, with charges pressed by her husband’s second-in-command. Also at the summit is Barry, the only other mindreader she knows, who is now employed in a similar position as Sookie to use as an advantage in vampire scheming. The anti-vampire church the Fellowship of the Sun has been ramping up their hostilities against vampires lately, and so security is extra tight.

Given the premise, it’s no surprise that there’s a lot going on in this book. Vampires are known for their scheming ways, and so filling a huge hotel with the highest ranking vampires from opposing factions all across the country is bound to be tense and complicated and potentially violent. There are schemes on schemes and there is plenty to keep the reader occupied trying to predict who is behind what. In this book, you get to see quite a bit more detail about the internal vampire hierarchy, and there are a lot of other singular moments that let you get a better feel for the broader worldbuilding that we have typically only been able to get small glimpses of from only knowing a few vampires in small communities.

Easily the best in the series so far, by a longshot. And, major bonus, there is nothing resembling this book in the TV series, so it is all fresh even to a TV viewer.

BOOK REVIEW: Definitely Dead by Charlaine Harris

written by David Steffen

Definitely Dead is a romance/mystery/horror novel from 2006, the sixth in the Sookie Stackhouse series of novels by Charlaine Harris (which is the basis of the HBO show True Blood). The previous books are all reviewed here earlier on the Diabolical Plots feed.

Sookie heads to New Orleans to sort out of the affairs of her cousin Hadley who had been turned into a vampire and then killed. Hadley’s apartment has been placed under a stasis spell placed on it by Hadley’s landlord, the witch Amelia Broadway. Shortly after the spell is lifted, a newly-made vampire (the werewolf Jake Purifoy) rises within the apartment and attacks them. Sookie’s new boyfriend, the weretiger Quinn, is also in New Orleans on business, so he helps with the investigation. With the help of Amelia and her coven of witches they set out to discover how Jake came to be newly raised in that apartment on the same day that Hadley died.

This is where reading the book series become much more interesting to me. Like the previous book, this one has no season of True Blood that is based upon. But compared to the previous book I felt like this one was much less scattered. There was a central mystery that was the main goal of the book, and the characters actively worked toward resolving it, (and there were other major plots that tied into that that I’ll let you discover for yourself). I enjoyed the completely new characters like Amelia Broadway, and especially enjoyed her and her coven’s involvement in trying to discover the events of the night of Hadley’s death. And, it was good to see Sookie have a new boyfriend character I wasn’t familiar with, because I didn’t know what to expect from Quinn.

The biggest issue I had with the book had more to do with series planning than about the book itself. Each of the books in the series starts with some summary of the series and the last book specifically, which is fine, especially given that romance and mystery genre readers may be more likely to pick up a series in the middle. But, in this case, if you’ve just been reading the books in the series, this one is likely to be confusing because among that “past story” summary Sookie talks about finding out about Hadley’s death. But… that had never been in any of the novels, and so I spent the first several chapters wondering if I had accidentally skipped a book. I hadn’t. It turns out that there was a short story she had written that takes place between the two books and shows Sookie finding out about Hadley’s death and the cause of her death. This struck me as kind of poor planning to assume one is going to have read a short story in its proper place in the novel series with no way to tell that there even was a short story. At the very least, an editor’s note to explain what happened would have gone a long way toward alleviating confusion.

Despite that poor planning, it was easily my favorite in the series so far, a very enjoyable read.

BOOK REVIEW: Dead as a Doornail by Charlaine Harris

written by David Steffen

Dead as a Doornail is a romance/mystery/horror novel from 2005, the fifth in the Sookie Stackhouse series of novels by Charlaine Harris (which is the basis of the HBO show True Blood). The previous books are all reviewed here earlier on the Diabolical Plots feed.

Sookie’s brother Jason, bitten by a werepanther, joins the local werepanther pack that lives in the nearby close-knit community of Hotshot (where the werepanther that bit him came from). Sam Merlotte is shot by an unseen shooter, and so is Calvin Norris the pack leader of Hotshot, and Sookie learns that other shifters have been shot all over Louisiana. Colonel Flood, leader of the Shreveport werewolf pack, is hit by a car and dies, and someone shoots Sookie as well(presumably because she associated with shifters). Although the existence of vampires is now public knowledge all over the world, shifters are still a closely kept secret, and so the common element of these shootings is not known to police, but Sookie can’t really tell them the common element either.

For someone who saw the entire True Blood series before starting any of the books, this book is remarkable in that it is the first book which doesn’t have a season of the TV series largely inspired by it. so it felt new to me in a way that the first four books in the series didn’t, and it doesn’t invite one to play the “was the TV show version or the book version better?” question.

Even so, this one felt a little bit scattered to me. While it did have a main central question of “who is killing/hurting shifters?” there is so little information to actually pursue that question through most of the book that I didn’t really feel like I was able to be very engaged trying to figure it out. There was certainly a lot going on, even besides the central shooting thing, so I never got bored, and lacking a TV comparison I didn’t know what to expect, so that was good.

Overall, it was an action-packed read, even though I wished the central mystery had more supporting clues for me to work with to try to guess the shooter, and for my own engagement it was a relief for it to take a big split from the TV show so that I could read without feeling like I’d already been through the story before.

BOOK REVIEW: Dead to the World by Charlaine Harris

written by David Steffen

Dead to the World is a romance/mystery/horror novel from 2004, the fourth in the Sookie Stackhouse series of novels by Charlaine Harris, which is the basis of the HBO show True Blood–this book was used very loosely as the basis for season 4 of the show. The previous books in the series (in order) are Dead Until Dark, (reviewed here), Living Dead in Dallas (reviewed here), and Club Dead (reviewed here).

Sookie (fresh from a breakup with her vampire boyfriend Bill)comes across the vampire Eric Northman running down a deserted road, with no memory of his life before that moment. She finds out that he has been cursed by a coven of witches that have moved into Shreveport and have been threatening Eric and his business interests in order to extort money out of him. Since Eric is more vulnerable than usual, without his memories, Sookie agrees to hide him at her house for a time; her brother Jason negotiates a fee for her to do this since she is short on money. But, shortly afterward, Jason disappears and the local police can’t find a trace of where he’s gone. Sookie fears that he has been abducted by the coven as well.

This story was the best in the series yet. It had a lot of interesting mystery going on with the missing brother and trying to find out how to combat the invading coven. One thing that kept it more fresh for me was that although a season of the TV show was loosely based on it, the basis was SO loose that there was still a lot to surprise me, and so I didn’t have the same issue as I had in previous books with wanting to draw direct comparisons between events. Although that season and this book both involved an invading hostile witch coven, and Eric having his memory cursed away, that’s about where the similarities end.

I was a little worried going in that it would cast all witches as villains–I know a few Wiccans so I didn’t want it to be a blanket condemnation. But the book had no issue in that regard–the book does differentiate between Wicca as a religion and witchcraft, and there are both witches as allies and witches as enemies in the book, so I was happy to see that.

Also interesting was that, with Bill out of the picture and an amnesiac Eric secretly living in her house, for the first time in the series Sookie gets a real shot at another romantic partner. Which mixed things up a bit, to keep things interesting.

Like the previous books, it is a quick and easy read with a slight tendency to over-summarize previous books, but is entertaining and fun, and this was the best one yet I thought.

BOOK REVIEW: Gwendy’s Button Box by Stephen King and Richard Chizmar

written by David Steffen

Gwendy’s Button Box is a novella written by Stephen King and Richard Chizmar, published by Cemetery Dance Publications.

Gwendy is a middle-schooler living in Castle Rock in the 1970s. She is not happy with her life–she never feels quite smart enough, quite thin enough, quite popular enough. She is trying to make her life fit her expectations better, sprinting up the steep Suicide Stairs to try to lose some weight, where she meets a mysterious stranger who gives her the titular button box. If he is to be believed, the buttons lining on the box would have catastrophic consequences of unbelievable, except the red button whose consequences are of a more negotiable scope. It also produces an apparently endless supply of chocolates that are both amazingly delicious and they also quell appetite, as well as valuable antique coins. He leaves her with the box, and she is left with the choice of whether and when and how to use it.

I love the cover art of the book by Ben Baldwin, with the incorporation of the suicide stairs into the man’s arms and the silhouettes at the top.

This book feels very familiar, after reading almost all of Stephen King’s previous works. Castle Rock is a recurring setting. The mysterious man is probably a recurring character (I say probably because I’m not sure his stated name is exactly the same but shifting names are also a characteristic of this character). The overall theme of being tempted with everything you desire without fully understanding the price is a recurring theme of King’s books.

Unfortunately, I didn’t feel like this one lived up to its potential. With a vast bibliography like King has, self-competition does become a problem. This, to me, felt too much like Needful Things, one of King’s best works, which did the theme much more thoroughly, much better, and at a length that King is (in my opinion) better at. The premise here was reasonably interesting, and solid, but King’s by-the-pants no-outlining writing style reared its head here, because the book rises and rises and then just kind of peters off at the end.

(I realize the book was co-written by Chizmar, but having not read any of Chizmar’s standalone work, I really have not enough familiarity with his writing to have much to say about that part alone)

I love the cover, I would hang that cover on my wall, and if you haven’t read tons of King’s other work, this might be appealing on its own despite its weak ending, but competing against the history of King’s own work, you could pick up quite a few of King’s other books to get the same feel of this one but better.

THEATER REVIEW: Disney’s Aladdin

written by David Steffen

Aladdin is a play based on a 1992 Disney cartoon movie of the same name. The play premiered in Seattle in 2011, and went to Broadway in 2014.

The story takes place in the fictional Arabic city of Agrabah. The title character Aladdin is a young man, an orphan who has to steal to survive. One day in the marketplace he meets a young woman and he falls for her, but then they are caught by the city guards and the woman reveals herself to be the princess of Agrabah as Aladdin is hauled away to the dungeons. Aladdin is pulled from the dungeons by Jafar, the sultan’s advisor, because a prophecy stated that Aladdin was the “diamond in the rough” the only one that could retrieve the wish-granting genie’s lamp from the Cave of Wonders. Aladdin goes and succeeds in finding the lamp, and is trapped in the cave but becomes the master of the Genie.

The play is based quite closely on the original movie, so if you like the original you’ll probably like this one as well–many familiar songs, plus a few songs that were written for the original but cut before final production of the movie (you might have heard them if you have an Aladdin DVD or Blu Ray with special features on it), and a few new ones as well.

There are some changes from the movie, most often for difficulty of production. There is no Abu, there is no Rajah, presumably because it would be hard to produce them in a compelling way in live theater. There is a Carpet, but it’s just a vehicle, not a character. There is an Iago, but he’s a human, not a parrot. Aladdin has a trio of friends he lives with on the streets–those friends presented some of the best new material, especially the song “High Adventure” which was a lot of fun (though that song and the play as a whole could use some swordfight choreography work.

If you like the movie, you’ll probably like the familiarity and new things about the show. If you haven’t seen the movie, but you like fun and fast-paced musicals, give it a try!