3.5 stars, maybe?

This book left me with a collection of mixed feelings. I absolutely adored 90% of this book. But, let’s dive into details, as spoiler-free as possible.

First, let’s talk about just how awesome this book is. The story follows a collection of heroines with ties to famous literary creations, from Sherlock Holmes to Frankenstein. The cast of characters is wide, and every one of them is wonderfully complex. I frequently laughed and sat in awe as the cast came together, each one adding a new and fantastic element to the story.

I also enjoyed the “Canterbury Tales” feel of quite a bit of the novel. The story is a mystery, but more of the mystery is unraveled as we meet new characters and get a chapter of their story. It’s a great concept and works well here.

Several people have mentioned the asides. Some found them enjoyable, others found them distracting from the story. I liked them, as they are the times when we get some great character moments. Other reviewers have talked about how they ruin the tension of the story, because the fate of the characters is revealed through the asides before the narrative proper gets to those fates. While I can understand, for me, what kept me flipping pages was the mystery of the story, not the fates of the individual characters. As such, I didn’t mind the asides at all.

But this is also where I run into the main issue I had with the story. Part of this is due to expectations, I’m sure, but I thought, when I started the book, that it was a standalone novel. It’s not. The book really has two mysteries, and to avoid spoilers, I’ll call them the immediate mystery and the overarching mystery. The overarching mystery is what gets the story rolling, but then the immediate mystery rears its head.

In short, the immediate mystery gets a conclusion (although one that is still uncomfortably open-ended), but the overarching mystery does not. Partly due to my expectations, but mostly because it was the overarching mystery that made me start flipping pages quickly, I was really let down that there would be no answers.

Overall, I still enjoyed this story, even though I personally was disappointed by the ending. I’d still recommend it, just so long as everyone is clear this is just an origin story.

Well, it seems as though I am back to watching television long after it comes out. (Have you all heard about Breaking Bad? I hear it’s pretty good, and I swear I’ll get to it eventually).

I just recently finished watching X-Files, season 10, which was the first season that came out after the long hiatus/cancellation. As someone who has watched every single episode of the original series, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t both excited and filled with trepidation as I approached the new series.

Unfortunately, I’d have to say that I wasn’t terribly impressed, and that made me unhappy. I was excited, and I wanted more.

I will start with some positive thoughts: it was fun to be back in the world of X-files once again. Even though I wasn’t that impressed, I’ll still go on to season 11, just because I enjoy the series as a whole. I even liked the “funny” episode, as probably more than any other, it threw me back into the “funny” episodes of the past.

Beyond that, though, I wasn’t terribly excited.

Perhaps my greatest disappointment was how the X-Files went from being filled with mystery and skepticism to more of a thriller tone. From the very first episode, there’s really no question of what’s happening. There’s no real mystery to solve, no questions that keep pulling you forward. Instead, you’re told almost straight-up what the new conspiracy is, and the only question is how to stop it.

One aspect of the show I was thinking about was how a long-running character or series can run into problems. While I still found some joy in Mulder and Scully’s interactions, the same dynamic wasn’t quite there. Of course, one can also blame a long hiatus, or even the actors themselves, but I think that a significant part of the problem is that Scully, reasonably, can’t be the skeptic she once was. Over the years, she’s seen too much. I found myself enjoying the Mulder-Einstein scenes (as bizarre as they sometimes were), not because they were great, but because they captured some of that old back and forth that defined the Mulder-Scully relationship.

While I can’t recommend the show, I am intrigued to watch the next (and arguably the last) season.

This past week I had great fun reading the book Mindjacker by CA Hartman. Mindjacker is the first in a new series, focusing on a woman, Quinn Hartley, who works as a mindjacker in a future dystopian society ruled by climate change.

As with all the CA Hartman novels I’ve read, the main protagonist is a strong female character, more than capable of handling herself in a variety of dangerous situations. Quinn, in this book, reminds me significantly of Stevie from Daughters of Anarchy. Both are comfortable with violence, and both are driven by a deep desire to make the world a better place. That being said, I find Quinn to be a more relatable and well-rounded character.

The pacing of this book is superb, and this ended up being a really quick read for me. Hartman does an excellent job of layering the tension, always being sure to give readers short breaks where we can catch our breath before adding another twist or complication. More often than not, I found myself ten or fifteen percent of the way through the book when I felt like I had only been reading a few minutes.

I found the world building in this book to be solid. Hartman has an eye for details, from plants to clothing, that brings this future society alive. However, if I had to list my greatest disappointment with the story, it was that I wanted to see even more of this world, a common problem I have with first books in a series. Much was hinted at but never truly explored, which only made me want to learn more.

As with any story these days that deals with hacking minds, it’s hard not to draw a comparison to Inception. The primary difference, in my eye, between Inception and Mindjacker, is that Inception focused on the rules and practice of hacking minds, while Mindjacker focuses on the characters who would consider rummaging through another’s mind their occupation. Inception deals with the world of dreams, Mindjacker deals with the world that possesses such a technology.

Overall, I really enjoyed this read. Fast, thrilling, and interesting, I’m very curious to see where this story goes next.