Warner Brothers's The Matrix Resurrections

First off, the disclaimer: I am not, in general, a fan of the current practice of reboots, remakes and sequels that should have been made years or decades ago. (Although I will make an exception for the Battlestar Galactica reboot.) Not only do I see it as insulting (usually) to the original material, but it stifles new intellectual properties. By and large, I think we'd all be better off with new things to read or watch instead of rehashing old stuff. This is basically the result of cowards in Hollywood who don't have the guts to take a chance on something new instead of retelling old stories that have paid before. It makes sense in a way but, bottom line, The Matrix was a new concept that worked.  When it premiered nineteen seventy-seven Star Wars was a new property. The dead mule has been kicked far too many times. My toes hurt.

That having been said, I really did enjoy The Matrix Resurrections. I will grant you that this is now an older franchise and that it's been sitting around for awhile. I'll grant you that the film's two biggest starts, Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Ann Moss don't look like they did when they made the movie. (Much love to both, but they're not as young as they were twenty years ago when the last movie was made. Sucks to be them. I'm at least six months younger than I was in 2003.) I'll even grant you than I wasn't excited to see it when it first came out.

None of that matters though. Matrix Ressurections was a good movie. It may not have been the masterpiece (and don't get me started about how I just misused that term. Everyone else does it, too.) that The Matrix was, but it was a well written movie with an actual plot and characters I actually cared about. The way it was done made sense out of the missed time (Resurrections is set sixty years after Reloaded) but moved things along nicely. And, let's face it, they managed to avoid my worst fears for the movie.

I was seriously concerned that Ressurections was going to make the original trilogy irrelevant. It doesn't. I was afraid the move would suck without Lawrence Fishburne, but it's actually really good. (And I've been a fan of Lawrence Fishburne since he was "Larry Fishburne" and starred in Hoodlum.) I was afraid that that if they didn't destroy the first trilogy, they'd go all The Force Awakens with it and rip off the first flick to the point that it felt like I was watching a remake, but they didn't. I was worrying over nothing, but let's face it: Hollywood hasn't done much to make me trust them lately.

That's not to say that there weren't call backs to the first three flicks. Resurrections actually reuses some of the original footage and we get to see a new scene that strongly echoes an old one, but it works in context. but the plot was not the same as the original. There was no "Hey guys, let's go blow up ANOTHER FREAKING DEATH STAR" moment. The fight, as always, was against the machines, but it wasn't the same fight. 

I loved seeing Neo as a mental patient, medicated to the gills. I remember seeing a lot of books at the bookstore (remember those?) about the psychological aspects of the movies. I read a few snippets here and there (I never bought one. I KNOW but, I mean, there was all this cool Science Fiction and Fantasy to read, who had time for non-fiction books about how crazy I was?) and the way Neo's mind was twisted was glorious to behold. The way they portrayed his fight for sanity as a fight against insanity was cleverly conceived and executed. If it left me scared to look in a mirror then so be it. If I've been reading a ton of articles about how the universe might just be a computer simulation, so what? Good art effects people and my brain is a haven for weirdness anyway.

A lot of the old characters are here, sort of. They've been redone. With Resurrections taking place sixty years after the original trilogy, it is assumed (I guess) that most of them are probably dead. The new characters make things look and feel different but using the first cast as archetypes provides a connection that works well. And don't worry. Agent Smith is still creepy. 

Oops I didn't say that. That would be a spoiler and I have a strict no-spoiler policy that I actually follow sometimes. 

Of course, it wouldn't be The Matrix without some hair curling action scenes and Resurrections delivers. Bullet time makes a comeback and fights between Neo and friends and their agent enemies abound. That made me happy. You can't do this without the occasional gunfight or karate kick. It just wouldn't work. The subject of all of the Matrix films has always been a war. I'm glad to say that they're still fighting.

The special effects for Resurrections are, as expected, freaking phenomenal. I would have been shocked if they weren't. The Matrix invented bullet time. The Matrix Reloaded was delayed while they figured out how to revolutionize visual effects to make one scene work. I can't think of anything innovative from  The Matrix Revolutions but it looked awesome. Resurrections actually looks better, but that's probably because we've had twenty years of technological progression since Revolutions. 

I'll be watching Resurrections again, and I'm surprised to hear myself say that. I only watched it because I was bored and needed something that I hadn't seen a million times. I went into this with a negative attitude and it managed to make me love it anyway. Either that's an impressive feat or I'm a gullible rube. I'd like to think of myself as being somewhat jaded by this point in my life (I'm forty-seven) and my mind was changed once I allowed myself to become immersed. 

Bottom Line: 4.5 out of 5 Red Pills

Matrix Revolutions
Lana Wachkowski
Warner Brothers, 2021

Travis Baldree's Legends and Lattes

I was contacted, somewhat recently-ish, by my friend Tom. He's the same guy who introduced me to aseries I have reviewed here. He told me that there was a new book I needed to check out. I obediently rushed off to Amazon for a copy of Travis Baldree's Legends and Lattes. I'm glad I did.

Legends and Lattes is a work of "cozy fantasy" and it's my first time reading in the genre. I have to admit that I enjoyed it. I was kind of surprised that I did, but I was surprised the first time I read Nathan Lowell's work, too. This is an awesome book, but it's kind of a strange departure for me.

The first work of fantasy I read was The Hobbit, followed by Lord of the Rings. After that, it was immediately on to the Dragonlance Chronicles, then the Dragonlance Legends. One right after another with no pause in between, since my buddy Jeff introduced me to the idea that a fantasy genre even existed. Prior to that my reading had been confined to Science Fiction, Non-Fiction and the occasional detective story. My point in mentioning all of those is that they were all heavily action based, high stakes stories with intense battle scenes and a sense of impending doom should the heroes fail. Legends and Lattes has almost nothing in common with those stories outside of having a fantasy setting but I loved it.

Our heroine, Viv, is a female orc and a former adventure with a significant savings of her ill-gotten gains and a passionate love of coffee in a part of the world where coffee is an unknown commodity. Viv is alright with that though. She brought some beans and an industrial sized coffee pot, complete with steamer. She can make her own coffee and sell it to the people in her new town. I mean, maybe. Maybe even probably. Viv is lucky in that there is no local Starbucks. She is unlucky in the fact that she's selling coffee to people who don't even know what coffee is. But she can make the coffee, and if she can find someone to buy it...

The other thing Viv is really good at making is friends. She finds people to help her build and run her new coffee shop on the bare bones of an old stable. There are enough technical details included to keep a yahoo like me, who can somewhat swing a hammer and has hung a bit of siding and done some household projects, satisfied with their accuracy. Whether a master carpenter would agree is, of course, a question for a master carpenter, but if you lack that degree of knowledge and experience, it should be enough to keep you from wanting to knock the author out. 

Speaking of accuracy your friendly neighborhood blogger has a history degree and finds himself wondering if Baldree's depiction of starting a new business is historically accurate to Renaissance Europe, which would be approximately the right period for Legends and Lattes. Your friendly neighborhood blogger is also a goofball and doesn't know for sure, but it feels right. I was satisfied with the way things went in the book.

I may have overstated the lack of violence in the book slightly. While there is very little actual fighting, there are a few threats of physical force. The strange part is that it only rarely happens and never really boils over. Viv actually hangs up her sword on the wall. But still, organized crime has its place in many fantasy settings and if Thune doesn't have the deep history of a city like Waterdeep, well, this is only the first book.

Thune is actually a well developed city, complete with everything from docks to trash dumps with a sprinkling of homes and businesses in between. Thune lives and breathes and is as much a character in the story as Viv herself and I like that. When I went to see Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves one of the coolest parts of watching it was seeing some of the iconic locations of the Forgotten Realms. Icewind Dale, Neverwinter, and Baldur's Gate (along with other places)  all feature prominently in the movie. Thune is too new and Baldree too relatively unknown to have that kind of drawing power, but it has the potential to make it that far. He just needs more fans and a few decades to get there. This makes sense because, according to his author bio, Baldree used to work in the video game industry. He has obviously learned something from his experience. 

My only complaint about Legends and Lattes, and I may very well be nitpicking here, is that there should have been a map of Thune included somewhere in the book. I get a decent picture of what the city looks like, but it would be better if I had been handed one. Maps are something lots of fantasy fans absolutely love and this feels like a fairly easy problem to fix. Maybe Baldree has a friend in the video game industry who could help him. For all I know, Baldree may have drawn some video game maps himself. 

You may, if you choose to do so, use that paragraph as an excuse to buy and read the book, thus looking forward to the next one as much as I am (And it's not out yet. I think I'll go cry.) and becoming a fan. I'm pretty excited because there aren't many authors that I have honestly followed since their first book, but this is my chance to get in on the ground floor. 

The sequel, Bookshops and Bonedust is already available for pre-order and I can't wait to get my grubby little mitts on a copy. I haven't been this excited about a new series in a looooong time. I haven't been this excited about a new subgenre in a long time. Fantasy author Genevieve Gornichec has called Legends and Lattes her new comfort read, and I think that fits. This is definitely an enjoyable fantasy read that you can dig into right before bed time and drift off peacefully to sleep afterward.

Legends and Lattes
Travis Baldree
Tor Books, 2023

Legends and Lattes is available for purchase at the following link. If you click the link and buy literally anything from Amazon, I get a small percentage at no cost to you.

DT Read's Echoes of Issel The Sergey Chronicles: Book Two

 

I remember seeing something D. T. Read had written about one of her Seventh Shaman novels. She thought a lot of fans might not like it because it was less action oriented.  I can't remember which one it was (And this is a common failing of mine. ) but it focused on Ku, the main character of that series, and his coming terms with being a husband and a father during some leave time during a war. I kind of wonder if she thinks the same thing about Echoes of Issel. I hope not. Seriously, not all of Science Fiction has to be space battles and explosions. Echoes of Issel has both of those, but this is a really phenomenal character driven drama.

Some of you missed the first book in The Sergey Chronicles, Ganwold's Child. You should be ashamed of yourselves. That much having been said, Tristan, the main character of both books, kills his first person in combat at the end of Ganwold's Child. If you've done the reading (and I have)  a lot of combat vets suffer from PTSD not from the horror and fear of combat, but because of what they were forced to do. A lot of Echoes is Tristan trying to recover from his PTSD related to that kill, and it makes sense.

A lot of Echoes of Issel is also Tristan and the rest of his nuclear family, his father Lujan and mother Darcie, as they try to become a family again after years of separation. As well as Read writes her action sequences, her forte really seems to be family interactions and bonding. She knocked it out of the park here. She obviously put some study in for this one. Some of what her psychologist character says sounds like it comes almost straight out of a textbook. I'm guessing it might. Seeing that study put into use as she takes us through Tristan's actions toward his father especially was amazing. Then add in a dash of a stranger in a new land (Darcie raised Tris among aliens) and things get really complicated. Read works through things with her typical aplomb and if I may have felt a desire to get in Tristan's face a couple of times that just means that:

A.) I'm a crusty old dude who doesn't deal with teenagers being teenagers any better than the crusty old man who raised me.

and 

B.) Read got an emotional reaction out of her reader. Emotional response being the goal of any smart artist, that translates into "job well done."

None of that is to say that Echoes of Issel is all talk and no action. The second half of the book, following a training interlude, is almost a straight Military Science Fiction action novel. Tristan remains a civilian but goes to war as a civilian scout attached to a Special Operations unit. Things get hectic.

In fact, Echoes of Issel  was part thriller, part medical drama and part Mil-SF. There is a lot here and it's actually impressive to see all of that in one book and have it work. 

Totally non-spoilery hint:

Don't mess with that Sergey kid.

Anyway...

I had gone into Echoes of Issel with full knowledge of the fact that Tris would be joining a SpecOps unit, but I don't think I was totally prepared for it. Most of the combat in Read's books, at least the ones I've read, have been mainly space battles. Fighter versus fighter, ship versus ship, etc. The combat in Echoes is much more up close and personal. Tris is fighting on foot with a rifle for the combat sequences. I should have expected that, but for some reason it caught me by surprise.

Huh?

Goofball? Me? You're just noticing that? Seriously? 

Your powers of observation are weak. 

Continuing on...

Read, being a retired Lieutenant Colonel, has a ton of knowledge and experience with things military and it shows. She has the military feel down. I expected that. What I didn't expect as much of was how well she integrated a young man with no real military experience into a military unit and made it feel real and make sense. I would expect members of a SpecOps unit to have reservations about having a civilian into their ranks and they do. But Tris, being an intelligent young man, earns his place in the unit and it feels organic. I could actually believe it happened as I read it. It felt right. I don't know how else to put it.

And Read's background as an intelligence officer shows through. She not only displays knowledge of how to conduct a debriefing, she also shows how that intelligence is put into use. There's a bit of ops planning revealed here, and I'd be willing to bet she sat in as a consultant during her military career as well. Echoes of Issel was not just well conceived. It was well executed.

The best Military Science Fiction always includes some political intrigue. Wars are, after all, an extension of policy using other means. The most talented authors not only acknowledge this basic truth, they use it as a tool to move their stories along. Echoes gives us just enough of the political end of things to move the story along without becoming overwhelming and bogging things down. I won't say precisely why, but I have a feeling that there is a political angle coming up in the next book, which I'm totally looking forward to.

I'm going to admit to being a bit miffed at myself here as well. I, was aware that Read was going to attempt to sell this series to Chris Kennedy Publishing (Theogony Books being their MilSF imprint) and I didn't get this book before CKP did the smart thing and bought it. It was totally for sale months ago. I had read the first one. I could have just flopped down the cash for Echoes of Issel and the next book (the title of which escapes me) months ago and I didn't. That was a mistake of titanic proportions. I’m kicking myself about it, if only because I still don’t have the last one in my greedy little hands. This is a problem which will, of course, be solved in due time but which was totally preventable. I'm looking forward to finally putting that problem to bed.

Bottom Line: 5.0 out of 5 Borbiks

Echoes of Issel
D.T. Read
Theogony Books, 2023

Echoes of Issel is available for purchase at the following link. If you click the link and buy literally anything from Amazon, I get a small percentage at no additional cost to you.

Savage Wars (Galaxy's Edge: Savage Wars Book 1) By Jason Anspach and Nick Cole

It's hard to believe, but just a few short years ago, I heard about this Nick Cole guy, and how he was this great GameLit author who had just been banned because he said something naughty. At the time I kind of pigeonholed the guy and decided he was a writer of GameLit (which I love) and I'd probably never see anything from him BUT GameLit. I was okay with that though, because he was good at it and, let's face it CTRL ALT REVOLT was a pretty awesome story and so was Soda Pop Soldier, although I seem to have failed to review the latter. My bad. My seriously bad, because Soda Pop Soldier was not just an awesome book, it was a gamers dream in a lot of ways. 

Oops.

Yes, that is my official excuse. 

Then one day, along comes this Anspach guy, throws him in the trunk and refuses to let Cole out till he agrees to co-author some awesome Military Science Fiction.

I mean, probably not. But that makes a good story, so that's what I'm going with.

Anyway...

This is a really awesome book. Apparently I missed it when it was first released because that's life in the salt mines, but I'm glad I got caught up.

It's weird because I hadn't read the Galaxy's Edge or Galaxy's Edge: Savage Wars series and for some reason I assumed that the Savages would be some kind of alien. And they kind of are. The Savages in the book are humans who left Earth to settle the stars in sublight ships and have evolved into uhh...

Something? Post humans? Monsters?

I'm struggling to find the right term here. They are, however, definitely xenophobic toward both other groups of Savages (basically, anyone from a different ship) and the rest of the human race, including those that stayed behind on Earth and eventually moved out to populate the universe using faster than light ships and got their before the Savages. 

The Savages tend to invade a planet, take what they need and leave...

Eventually.

And at some point, they begin to obtain FTL engines and it's on. 

The scary part is that no one knows where they are out in the void. Anspach and Cole seem to have a grasp of the fact that space is freaking huge and there really is no way to find something in the Darkness if it doesn't want to be found. I like that. 

Our story starts right in the middle of a fight against the Savages when they invade New Vega. The fight is up-close, intense and personal. Neither author seems to have wanted to spare anyone the details and I like that. Too often, Military Science Fiction (as well as Military Fiction and quite frankly Military Non-Fiction) seem to want to shy away from the goriness of it all. This is war at its ugliest (or at least the ugliest it can be to those of us who don't experience it in person) and it feels real and gritty. 

Something else that feels real is the lack of true leadership at the highest levels. The feeling I get here (and I could be a bit off) is that the various human militaries that have been fielded for this battle are under the command of an entity that is a close analogue to the United Nations in terms of aim, purpose, usefulness, and competence. 

For those of you that missed it, that means that The Galactic Confederacy (Sort of. The GC is more of a hope than a governing body at this point) is  a group that wants to make things better, has no clue how to do so and stumbles over itself through cluelessness and a general lack of trust. I'm thinking that Savage Wars is a trilogy prequel and hopefully things get better for humanity's last great hope, but for right now I don't think much of them. Still though, the whole new society aborning thing does give Savage Wars a feel similar to the better parts of Star Trek: Enterprise only without the ending that I hated so badly. 

Our main characters are soldiers stuck in a war against an enemy that they can't understand. The trans-human nature of the enemy is something that they grapple with and eventually figure out, but it's not really like fighting typical human beings for the most part. Also, they Savages tend to enjoy a large technological advantage. And that brings up an interesting point.

I don't think you need to read the Galaxy's Edge series to enjoy Savage Wars because I haven't read the other series and I loved this book. I do, however think I may be missing something here. I can't quite wrap my head around the fact that the Savages have developed super weapons over centuries in space (and the alien super weapon thing is a theme in the story) with no reason given. It messes with my mind a bit. I mean, once you accept that they have everything that follows makes sense. I just feel like maybe there's a threat out there that I don't know about, or maybe they've made war against each other previously or...

I dunno, sumfin'

There are twists and turns aplenty in Savage Wars and that makes sense. War is not a static situation where one side can simply dictate how things go. Both sides have a say and things go wrong regardless of which side you happen to be on. If some things made me want to scream, then so be it. They work. Savage Wars, at least from the point of view of this fledgling author, seems to have been well planned and executed. The characters may not have known exactly how the Battle for New Vega was going to go, but the authors clearly did and if flows smoothly, believably and entertainingly.

Oof. I was feeling another -ly ending there and couldn't come up with one. Feel free to pretend it's there. 

Of course, we don't do spoilers here at Jimbo's and so I can't talk about my favorite part of the Savage Wars.  I will say that it's the best kind of twist: I had no clue before it happened and then couldn't believe I missed it afterward. I am, however, seriously peeved that I can't mention what I want to and totally plan to stick my tongue out at whichever author I meet if I ever happen across them at a con.

Bottom Line: 5.0 out of 5 Crusty NCOs

Savage Wars (Galaxy's Edge: Savage Wars Book 1)
Jason Anspach and Nick Cole
Wargate Nova, 2020

Savage Wars (Galaxy's Edge: Savage Wars Book 1) is available for purchase at the following link. If you click the link and buy literally anything from Amazon, I get a small percentage from Amazon at no additional cost to you.