I see why this got so much hate

 So, despite my best attempts to avoid it, I did read Greg Weisman's deeply unpopular War of the Spark: Forsaken this week. 

Picking up right after the last volume, we get into the chase after 3 planeswalkers who had sided with Nicol Bolas. Including the perpetual Liliana Vess, who's popularity has remained constant over the years since her introduction. The others are Tezzeret and Dovan Baan. 

Ugh. Anyway, of the 3, only Dovan actually dies, mainly because someone else kills him and plans to blackmail the person who was supposed to. (This was an older storyline, so the plot should be pretty familiar to anyone who reads the book.) 

There were a couple of odd reveals, such as finding out that Rat, the invisible girl, also has a male personality that assassinates people, and exactly who all the shapeshifter Laslov is actually impersonating. (One of his old printings is actually a lot of fun to play.) 

And then there's the controversial part. See, it was heavily implied that Chandra and Nissa were having an affair. And in this book, we find out it was never consummated, and most folks read it as bi-erasure. Which, yeah I get that. On the other hand, letting Chandra and Nissa have a happy ending given that everyone else gets a bad ending (Jase and Vraska are back to Human/gorgon coupling, but lacking trust in each other; Ral and Tomik losing together time; Gideon dead, etc etc....) it kind of makes sense that the world is bereft of elf on pyromancer fanfic for a while.  I'm sure they'll retcon the retcon eventually. 

Readable, but silly.

Let's break out the D&D and Ozzy!

 So, as part of my attempt to read something scary for Halloween, I wound up grabbing Whisper Down the Lane by Clay McLeod Chapman. (It popped up on goodreads, it looked interesting.) 

So, we're switching between two narratives; one, Sean, starts in 1983ish, and one, Richard, is self narrated in 2012. Both are the same person, we just wait most of the book to get the full story on what exactly happened to turn Sean into Richard. The long story short here is that Sean got lead down the garden path by a pushy child psychologist and, along with his classmates, winds up implicating his teachers in a Satanic Ritual Abuse scandal. 

In 2012, Richard is teaching art at an Elementary school, and lo and behold, we start with him finding a mutilated rabbit with a birthday card for Sean stuck in its chest cavity. Things in the past keep happening in the present. It does seem Richard is being set up to be accused of doing what he accused his teachers of doing. 

Having lived through the 80's moral panic, Chapman does a really good job of recreating the mindset of the era during the Sean bits. Deeper digging into the era shows that what Sean endures pretty well reflects what was happening with the children coming forward with wild tales of zombies feeding them flesh after being summoned by teachers. 

That being said, the parts in the present of 2012 fall flat. Really flat. It felt a lot like reading an outline of a much better story than actually was presented. Even the big reveal isn't that exciting, as pretty much anyone paying attention will figure it out about halfway through.

Which is sad, since Sean's story is both sad and compelling. One just wishes Richard's story was more fleshed out, and less thin than his created identity.

Meet/Cute with a bunch of silly

 So, one of the books I found myself browsing at work was Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall.Which once I realized was male male romance with a male author, I figured, Why not?

So, we're (self) centered around Lucien O'Donnel, the son of an Irish-French Folk Singer and a Prog Rock start who mostly seems to be a cypher of Ian Anderson. Luc is about to get fired from his job as a donation coordinator for a Dung Beetle charity after donors get wind of him passed out in a gutter after a party, particularly after the paparazzi takes pictures of said event. Needing reputational rehab, he gets his best friend Bridget to set him up with Oliver Blackwood, a straight laced criminal defense solicitor. As it turns out, Oliver needs a fake boyfriend to get through his parents' anniversary party. 

Which leads to a fake relationship that becomes much more real about halfway through. 

Well, ya know, except for the whole complications that crop up towards the end, leading to Richard Gere picking him up from his hovel....er...well....

I mean, we get solid portrayals of both men's emotional damages as the plot meanders on; Luc's dad left him for fame, and tries to reconcile now that he's dying of cancer and on a The Voice style competition, Oliver's parents are some of the most unintentionally cruel people this side of Harry Potter's Aunt and Uncle. It's appropriately sad at all the right points, and absurd bits of humor crop up at unexpected intervals. 

Yeah, it's a bit too frothy to be serious, and a bit too dark to be comedy. But it works and entertains. 

Nicol Bolas needs ketchup

 So, one of my older HPB purchases was Greg Weisman's novelization of Magic: the Gathering's War of the Spark. 

Now as someone who plays the game occasionally, I knew the plot here, but reading the novel was kind of a novel concept to me.

Problem being that, like many novels written about gaming material, it's really uneven. 

So, plotwise, we open on Elder Dragon Nicol Bolas landing on the city plane of Ravnica, and setting his trap. The Planar Beacon to draw every planeswalker in the multiverse to Ravnica, the Immortal Sun, to trap everyone there, and the Planar Bridge opened in the Guildhall to disrupt the leylines and let the mummified Eternals to march on Ravnica, taking everyone's Spark to feed Bolas.  

As such, what remains of the Gatewatch gathers to try to put down Bolas once and for all. 

Anyone who plays the game has a good understanding of this. People who don't aren't likely to read this. 

Anyway, there are a few surprises in here, like finding out Static Shock er Ral Zarek has a male lover. Or the about as subtle as the Village People lesbian undertiones between Chandra and Nissa. (Supposedly, in the sequel volume, they retcon the hell out of that.) We get the silliness of Jace's love for the Gorgon Vraska (it's sweet, but I'm trying to figure out what the children would look like), and Rat, who almost no one can see. 

Honestly, the weak parts here are trying to humanize the characters. They have no real depth.

On the other hand, as befits the authors work with comic books, the action sequences match if not surpass the grand fight scenes in your average MCU movie, where everyone gets some screentime to show off. I mean, when the Invulnerable Gideon Jura, paragon of White Magic attacks Bolas after jumping off the Black and red Demon Radkos, I felt the urge to yell loudly and throw popcorn. 

Honestly, I enjoyed it enough to feel I didn't waste money by buying the volume, but...

Not the cemetary, but the Lake

 I'm running behind on updates again.

So, Riley Sager wrote another late summer thriller, and once again, I wound up reading it, expecting the same issues I run in to with his narratives. 

Honestly, The House Across the Lake is a step up from previous novels by the author, but it does suffer from a problem with sticking two major twists too close together, so that the effectiveness of the final twist suffers. 

We open on Casey Fletcher, an actress who has been schlepped up to her lakeside Vermont estate after her drinking problem got so out of control that she got fired from a Broadway play she was starring in. WE find out that Casey's drinking issues stem from her husband drowning in the lake she's currently trapped at a year prior. (Yes, I didn't make the connection that Casey is a rough cypher for Carrie Fisher until I started writing this review.)

Anyway, We have four other people staying at the lake, which is fairly isolated and very rich. Eli, an old sci-fi author is the only year round resident. We have Boone, a recovering alcoholic ex cop restoring the neighbor's house. And we have Tom and Katherine,  the former a tech millionaire, and the latter a supermodel. 

We get introduced to Katherine as Casey saves her from drowning in the lake. 

Anyway, the story becomes equal parts Rear Window, and a few other horror movies we won't mention due to spoilers, as a hurricane remnant approaches, and Casey starts spying on the neighbors with her dead husband's bird watching binoculars, as we find out EVERYONE's dirty secrets. 

I mean, the overwhelming sense of catharsis is palpable as we hit the first finale, but then there's the second finale that falls kind of flat following the original reveal. Past that, it's what I expect from Sager, readable fun.