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Berserk (2016, S1) – Anime Review

November 6, 2016 by hpholo 4 Comments

Sometimes you just want to watch a grimdark drama where everything is a disaster and you can’t do anything about it so why bother? This year’s election coverage should sate that thirst.
But if it doesn’t, there’s Berserk.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAkl2uJEuA4&w=560&h=315]
Note: I’m about to spoil a whole TV series and three movies and several volumes of the Berserk manga, so if you haven’t experienced any of these yet, consider this your SPOILER WARNING. Also might as well throw in every TRIGGER WARNING ever because if Berserk hasn’t made it to one yet, chances are it will eventually.
Berserk is basically “Everything sucks and then you die” given anime form. The series’ Golden Age arc, covered in a 1997 TV series, the 2012-2013 movies, and the manga (duh) is a medieval epic of warring nations, charismatic mercenary leaders, and badass swordsmen (and one swordswoman), but it ends with the infamous Eclipse Ceremony, wherein said leader sacrifices his whole mercenary band to become a god and everyone is eaten by grotesque hellish demons – except the main character, who loses one arm and one eye and has to use the other to watch his former-BFF-now-hella-enemy rape his girl until she literally goes insane.
Welcome to the Conviction Arc.

This year’s bright and cheery series picks up where the Golden Age arc left off (*in the anime. In the manga, the Black Swordsman arc bridges the two). Protagonist Guts has left former-awesome-woman-soldier-now-witless-girlfriend Casca under the watch of the blacksmith Godo and is off to find and kill the Apostles of the evil God Hand. (Also Griffith because there’s no way a man can watch another man do that do his woman and not kill the heck out of him). Before he can accomplish this, though, he has to chop through all the evil spirits attracted by the cursed brand on his neck – and on Casca’s, once she inadvertently escapes from the safety of an enchanted cave. His search for her leads him to a refugee settlement surrounding the Tower of Conviction, where he is frequently thwarted by Mozgus, the Chief Inquisitor of the Holy See, and not really thwarted by Farnese de Vandimion of the Holy Iron Chain Knights, though she tries, bless her heart.
In case you haven’t figured it out yet, Berserk is absolutely an adult anime. There’s blood and gore galore, grotesque and disturbing situations, and thoroughly creepy character designs, though the much-needed comic relief of the fairy Puck serves to alleviate some of this.

However, it’s also a fantastic medieval horror fantasy based upon what is possibly the best dark fantasy manga out there, and the strength of its characters and story is what keeps it from descending into torture porn.
Content aside, the first thing you should know about this Berserk series is that it seems to be made for existing Berserk fans, more so than newbies. Though the plot will make sense with minimal context, you absolutely need to have read the Golden Age arc in the manga or watched the 1997 TV series to appreciate the emotional baggage behind what goes on, especially regarding former-bro-now-evil-god Griffith, who is a likable, even admirable character in the Golden Age (until he’s not), and Casca, who is one of the best female characters in anime (until she loses her mind). I leave the movies out because, though they cover the same material, and though they’re entertaining, they aren’t so good at establishing the necessary emotional connections.
Once you know what you’re starting, you’re in for a pretty solid series. The pacing is good, and though some features of the story are exaggerated – pretty much every scene with Guts and that person-sized metal bludgeon he calls a sword; Mozgus; the horror elements in general – the story itself stays grounded with relatable side characters, in particular a group of prostitutes who take in the lost Casca:

Luca is a motherly figure who just wants to keep her girls safe; Nina is well-meaning but also abundantly terrified by their situation, enough that she frequently flip-flops between loyalty to her friends and a sense of sheer panicked self-preservation (so, the most realistic character in this series). Outside of that group, Farnese is a flagellant who punishes herself for not living up to her position as leader of the Holy Iron Chain Knights, even as she struggles with the perceived rightness of the Holy See’s actions; and Jerome is a soldier who’s just tired of this sh*t but can’t say anything because really who’s going to challenge this guy?

Still, if there weren’t characters like Guts to make this face back at Mozgus every once in a while, Berserk wouldn’t have a story – just pages and pages of carnage:

Arguably, Guts is the weakest character in terms of development. He literally has about three expressions, which are angry, Resting Badass Face, and the iconic Berserk Grin above. It’s not that he isn’t a complex character. He is. It’s just that all his development happened in the previous arc, and with that out of the way – not to mention all the trauma he met at the hands of Griffith – all his personality has room to do is care for Casca and kill demons.
Likewise, the series’ antagonist is not very complex, either. Mozgus thinks he’s a good guy but he also keeps a lavish, bloody torture chamber and carries portable breaking wheels on his carriage in case he has to whip them out on the road. (You never know when you’ll have to do an impromptu holy scourging!) There are moments where he seems merciful, but nah, it’s a trap.

Nothing in this series is good without 1) being a trap or 2) dying fast.
So far so good, but if anything in this series has been a point of contention for fans, it’s the animation. The movies’ blend of 2D and cel-shaded 3D was controversial when they released, and this series’ blend was no less so, largely because Berserk has a rough art style that suits its content, and you can’t achieve the same effect with CG (or at least the movies didn’t). Though the CG in the movies wasn’t necessarily bad, it was still robotic and clean enough to be distracting.

tumblr_mxrizcwuex1r13fhoo1_500 — An example of said animation. Also of how to end up hecka dead when dealing with Casca. #protip

This is still true of the 2016 series. However, it’s not quite as bad here, the reasons being that the series does a vastly better job of capturing the roughness of the manga’s art, and also that most of the series is CG, as opposed to the movies, which were roughly equal parts both. In fact, in this case, the hand drawn parts are the ones that stand out as inconsistent and strange.
Could the animation have been better? Yes. I’d have loved to see a fully hand-drawn Berserk series rendered with today’s animation technology. But given the complexity of the armor designs and the comparatively narrower audience to which a series as mature as Berserk appeals, hand drawn – i.e. more expensive – animation would likely not have been an economical choice.
Plus, the animation in the original Berserk anime was awful and it still made fans of us.

At this point we anime fans have just grown spoiled on a glut of really awesome animation, and frankly I’m so glad that the series even exists that the animation is only a minor bummer for me.
All in all, this year’s Berserk series is worthy of fans’ anticipation. If you can get past the animation (for fans), know the preceding story, and if you can stomach all the grotesquerie (for new watchers), it’s twelve episodes of time well spent.
***
Note: Holo Writing is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program and, as such, may earn a small commission from any product purchased through an affiliate link on this blog.

Pokemon Go: Halloween Event – Game Review

November 3, 2016 by hpholo Leave a Comment

I’ve been a Pokemon Go player since day one, but when I first learned of this past weekend’s Halloween event, I was only cautiously excited. After all, for everything Pokemon Go does right, there are ten other features that amount to “could have been awesome but were ruined by stupid problems.”
It was a pleasant surprise, then, when the event turned out to be a rousing amount of fun – with very few problems to speak of! 😀

For the uninitiated, Pokemon Go’s Halloween event ran from Wednesday, October 26th through Monday, November 1st.
During it, players could earn twice as much candy for basically everything – catching Pokemon (which earned 6 candies vs. the normal 3), trading Pokemon (2 vs. 1), hatching eggs (variable numbers depending upon the egg distance), etc.
Buddy Pokemon also yielded candy 4x faster than usual, with 1km buddies finding candy at .25km, 3km at .75km, and 5km at 1.25km.
And of course, select Pokemon fitting the Halloween theme appeared in greater numbers.

Oddly, though I imagine the increased Pokemon sightings were meant to be the big draw for the event, they were the least exciting part for me. Plus, I’m not sure why anyone at Niantic looked at Pokemon Go and said, “You know what this game needs? MORE ZUBATS.” 😐 Frankly, it’s not like any of the Pokemon featured were especially rare to begin with, but I went from having one wimpy Gastly and Meowth before the event to a whole army of Haunters and Persians during, so I can’t complain too much.

The real success of the Pokemon offerings was not in the Pokemon featured, but the sheer number of sightings in general. In my neighborhood and favorite haunts (pun intended), I’m lucky to occasionally see a Pidgey. Heck, it is exciting to see a Pidgey. But for those few days, all those areas had Meowths and Drowzees and Cubones and Gastlies galore, such that I was actually able to play without making a special trip, which is what I usually have to do (a perk of being your own boss: scheduling dedicated Pokemon Go days). That said, thanks, Niantic, for making your game playable in suburbia, if only for a week.
As fun as that was, though, the best part of the event was its candy-related perks.

Due to the aforementioned suburban lack of Pokemon, I use Pokemon Go as a glorified walking app, more than a game:
Each day I assign myself an egg or a certain number of candies and walk the distance necessary to hatch/find them. I’ve really enjoyed the introduction of the Buddy Pokemon system because it tricks me into walking more. After I hatch a 2km egg, I’ll usually see that I have 1km left to go on a Buddy candy; so I start a new egg, find a candy, see that I now have 1km on my new egg, etc… It is a vicious cycle that has resulted in some sweet leg muscles. Anyway, given the way Pokemon Go updates distances (in .2km-ish chunks rather than by step), the diminished distances introduced in this event led to A LOT of “Oh, just .1km to go” loops and resultant candies. Hooray for app-assisted health!
The candy perks had high strategic value, too (if the word “strategy” can be applied to a game like Pokemon Go). Prior to the Halloween event, I had several uncommon Pokemon that were within 10 or so candies of evolution – not a huge number, but no small amount of walking, either, given that most were egg-hatched Pokemon not common in my geographic area (and that I thus couldn’t evolve with candy from wild Pokemon). After a Halloween of plugging those Pokemon into the Buddy system, though, I evolved nearly all of them on walking alone! Combine those with all the Meowths and Zubats and Cubones and Gastlies (SO MANY GASTLIES) that I was able to evolve from catches, and this event made for an XPpalooza!

I can almost literally say that there was nothing wrong with this event.
Almost. It wouldn’t be Pokemon Go without a random problem.
Early in the week, I encountered a glitch that kept my distances walked from updating, but that was fixed within a day with a quick patch. More significantly, one of Pokemon Go’s new features/issues is that it dampens the sounds of programs running in the background of a device. Which, I guess, is cool if you need the extra quiet to concentrate on flicking Pokeballs at cute little monsters. Not so much if you want to listen to music while you play – or, as I do, listen to audiobooks while you walk. With Pokemon Go’s new sound settings, I have to turn my iPhone’s volume all the way up to even begin to hear my book. (I don’t run with headphones in for safety reasons, so the book has to compete with environmental noise.) It’s not a problem worthy of nerdrage, but it would be nice to have the option to turn it off.
But really, that was the biggest problem I had with this event. Overall, though Pokemon Go’s persistent general problems have gone unaddressed (WHERE IS TRACKING? TRADING? BATTLING YOUR FRIENDS?), the Halloween event was a huge step in the right direction, and I look forward to seeing what other seasonal events Niantic has up its sleeve.

Is it Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? Vol. 1 – Book Review

October 21, 2016 by hpholo Leave a Comment

After months of curiosity, I finally decided to dip my toe into the light novel waters with Fujino Omori’s Is it Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? Volume 1. In the end, it didn’t make a fan of me, but it still made for some fun before-sleep reading.
Much of my reaction was due to the quality of the writing (or perhaps the translation). It’s full of awkward exposition dumps, dialogue with minimal transitions, and even dialogue that consists solely of punctuation. It all gets the meaning across, so it’s not that it’s hard to understand, but the former English teacher in me wonders how an editor even let that slide into publication. Even the title is clunky, though I do admit it does a better job of drawing attention than any possible abbreviation could have.
Once you get used to its general clunkiness, tough, it’s a cute little read. In it, Bell Cranell is a new adventurer who, well, wants to pick up girls in a dungeon. In the meantime, he must also work to support himself and his patron goddess, Hestia. In the world of Orario, gods live among mortals, with a few mortal limitations, though they are able to grant boons to members of their Familia so these people can literally level up in various skills. (The world is not subtle with its RPG inspirations.)
Despite the epic potential of the setting, it’s not an epic story at all. Mostly it consists of Bell being awkward around girls and looking at jiggly boobs – but he’s far from am oogler or peeping tom, which is what keeps the story palatable. In fact, beneath all his awkwardness and hormones, Bell is quite likable – courageous, well-meaning, and not nearly as stupid as protagonists of these kinds of stories can be. And let’s face it, he’s only 14 years old; most 14-year-old boys are going to be at least marginally fascinated by boobs, and it was refreshing to read about one who’s at least subtle and shy about his love of the ladies. Given the nature of the series’ premise, we could have been stuck with someone much worse.
That doesn’t make it a feminist work by any means, though. xP Nearly all of the girls in the series are things for Bell to have crushes on, and all fill some anime girl stereotype – the distant, aloof tsundere; the cute moe girl; the girl who greets other girls by honking their boobs 😐 , etc. Sitting down to write this review, I literally can’t remember much more about each one than that, but Bell’s interactions with them are still endearingly sweet, and the way he uses his various crushes to motivate himself to level up and be a more capable person (as opposed to a chick magnet) is refreshing. Plus, the monster fights are fun.
It’s not a complicated read at all (I mean, it is a light novel), and I imagine the best audience for the book is young teen boys who like to imagine themselves in situations like Bell’s (so, not me). It did make me curious to try the anime, just for comparison – and because the story wants so hard to be an anime – but it didn’t leave me wanting more.

H.P. at the Pugs & Pals Picnic 2016!

October 20, 2016 by hpholo Leave a Comment

I’ve wanted to go to the Pugs & Pals Picnic in Stokesdale, NC for YEARS but never could for various reasons. This year, I finally had my chance, and since I’d written a book starring a pug, I figured why not do a book signing, too?
Thus began the day’s adventure.

Jacob sent my sis to be my keeper ’cause he knew I’d come home with a pug if he didn’t. This is her I’M WATCHING YOU face.

The Pugs & Pals Picnic is a fundraiser and adoption event held by Pug Rescue of North Carolina Inc., wherein visitors can meet all the pugs up for adoption, bring their own pugs for some play time (Pug Rule #1: All time is play time), and generally revel in the delights of all things pug.
Let’s be real: Faced with all that furry cuteness, I spent about 2% of the time actually signing and the rest of it meeting ALL MY NEW ANIMAL FRIENDS.
One was Papa Pug, mascot and spokespug for Compassionate Pug Rescue in Florida. He lost one eye when he was hit by a car, but that hasn’t stopped him from strolling about in his luxurious pram or pausing for photo ops with the little people. (Dude has like 6000 followers on Facebook!)

I also met Chopper as he made his rounds. He’s a senior pug whose aging legs couldn’t contain the weight of his own awesomeness, so he either has to use a doggie wheelchair or just sit in someone’s lap all day. I was happy to oblige.

As of this post, he’s available for adoption! I couldn’t adopt him (see: sis above. Also I travel too much to give a pug the necessary attention), but if you want to adopt him in my stead, have at it! Pug Rescue’s application form is here (scroll down once you click).
Finally, Chewie already has a person, but I guess he could sense my desire to PET ALL THE THINGS, as he camped out by my chair for a while and gave plenty of pug kisses.

I met several other adoptable pugs, too, but was unable to snap good pics of them. Still, Simon is a cutie (just wook at that widdle tongue!) and Emma is a sweetheart who perked up every time someone visited her pen. Somehow I missed Sid, the remaining dog on the adoption page, but his adoption is already pending anyway, so hooray for him. 🙂
Finally, I totally missed her while I was there (see: PETTING ALL THE THINGS), but there was another pug author at the event, too!
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9sM3GAiLv8&w=560&h=315]
Rhys Ella is the author of the pug-centric Kato and the Fountain of Wrinkles and My Human Survived Kindergarten, so if you’re into cute books about animal mischief, give them a look! I haven’t read them yet myself, but they’ve definitely been added to my ever-growing to-read list.
The next Pugs & Pals Picnic is scheduled for October 21, 2017, and I’ll probably be there again! 😀

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child – Book Review

October 8, 2016 by hpholo Leave a Comment

Ok, if you haven’t read Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by now, that’s your own fault. Consider this your SPOILER WARNING.
(And yes I know I am months behind the rest of the world, but that is what happens when you’re writing a book. 😛 )

In case you need a plot refresher: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is basically Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: The Epilogue: The Play. Harry is a dad of three and the harried and overtired Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and his middle child Albus hates him, proving that adulthood sucks even if you’re a wizard. As if that’s not bad enough, his past keeps coming back to haunt him in the form of scar pains and lingering threats that Voldemort may somehow be returning. This past haunts Albus, too, as his father’s legacy weighs heavily on him, but he is his father’s son, and when it comes time to get into trouble to save the wizarding world, he does just that.
I’d really hoped to first experience The Cursed Child as a play rather than a script, but I also hate spoilers, and this is the Internet age, and none of those things combine well. After reading, I do think The Cursed Child probably works better as a performance, and it is ultimately entertaining. However, it has some very problematic parts that not even performance can save it from.
One is pacing; plays have very different pacing demands than novels do, and a reading of The Cursed Child suffers for this. Years pass in the first act within the space of a few pages. While the visual metaphor used to convey this is cool to behold (I imagine), it robs the reader of the connection one would form with the characters if given a chance to see those years played out in prose form. I didn’t feel any connection to most of the characters for much of the book (except Albus and Scorpius; more on that later), which was especially disheartening, considering that I spent seven years of my young life reading about the younger versions of some of them.
The second is that it bends, if not totally breaks Harry Potter canon to make its story work. For complicated reasons, the plot hinges upon Albus and Scorpius using a Time-Turner to keep Cedric Diggory from dying during the Triwizard Tournament of The Goblet of Fire…even though The Prisoner of Azkaban clearly establishes that Time-Turners can’t be used to alter history. The story tries to wiggle its way out of this by having Harry lament that Time-Turner technology has changed since his day, as if Time-Turners are as (comparatively) simple as computers – and also as if anything in the wizarding world has advanced in the past several hundred years.
This disregard for the rules of its own world contributes to the third problem, which is that 80% of the play reads like fanfiction – well-written fanfiction, albeit, but fanfiction nonetheless. Each of Albus’ and Scorpius’ trips into the past (there are several) alter the timeline in ways that eventually become nothing but fan service. Umbridge shows up so that readers/viewers can hate her more; Snape shows up and admittedly steals the scene he’s in, but the fact that the play undoes his death – however briefly – inadvertently cheapens it. In fact, the whole idea that the future can be so radically and easily changed by a simple Time-Turner trip makes the entire Wizarding World seem very breakable, which is jarring for a reader who’s accustomed to the solid world-building of the main series.
Because of all these, there were moments when I was afraid the script was going to be a disaster.
However – and it’s a big however – despite these flaws, the play is worth reading for what it does well.
In fact, it’s worth reading for Scorpius Malfoy alone. Ah, Scorpius. You were destined for an unfortunate school experience the moment your parents named you Scorpius, but you took your insecurities and rocked them.
Scorpius is adorkable in the best way, a shy, awkward nerd who inadvertently spins that awkwardness into endearing charm. (A discussion where he tries to compliment Rose Granger-Weasley by telling her she smells like bread is priceless.) He’s isolated from all other Hogwarts students because of a nasty rumor that he might be Voldemort’s child (another bit of fan thinking, with equally fannish developments), but when he and Albus bond over their respective daddy issues, the relationship that results is worthy of J.K. Rowling at her height. Any scene featuring the two of them together is a delight to read, not only because of their interactions, but because these are the scenes that most closely approach what longtime fans love about Harry Potter – the adventure, mischief, and magic. In particular, the scene where the sweets-purveying Trolley Witch tries to prevent them from escaping the Hogwarts Express is so fun that it feels like a genuine piece of Rowling’s imagination.
If this play had been nothing but Albus and Scorpius going on adventures, it would have been perfect.
Unfortunately, the scenes involving the adult versions of the iconic characters were my least favorite part. It’s simply not fun to read about overworked, miserable, grownup Harry, Hermione, and Ron. In the original books, readers could read them and say, “Sure, things may be terrible, but at least they have magic!” but in The Cursed Child, it’s “Ugh, they have magic, but things are still terrible.” All of them have lost the spark that made them so interesting in the original books, and Ron in particular is reduced to nothing but comic relief (even more so than movie Ron). It’s like looking at enchanted portraits that only captured their least heartening qualities. One could argue that it’s a realistic depiction of adulthood – After all, even happy adulthood can’t compare to the high points of childhood – but who reads Harry Potter for realism?
All the characters become a little more interesting when the father-son issues are resolved, and the climax – which sees grownup Harry Potter at Godric’s Hollow in the past, at the very moment when his parents are murdered, unable to do anything without ruining the timeline – is deliciously heartbreaking for fans. But so much potential was squandered on the rest of the story that it’s depressing to even think about it.
The actual identity of the titular Cursed Child is also left ambiguous – maybe it’s Albus, maybe Scorpius, maybe Harry himself. Maybe it’s even this other character, who I will not disclose but is also fan service. It’s neat to have all of those possibilities, but I would have at least liked the story to hint significantly at one and then invite the reader/viewer to go “Ooo, but what if…?” Compared to everything else, though, that’s a quibble.
All this said, my reactions to Harry Potter and the Cursed Child were nearly as convoluted as the play itself. The parts that I disliked, I really disliked, but the parts that I loved have me desperate for some good Albus/Scorpius fic.*
*Or perhaps to read Rainbow Rowell’s Carry On because let’s be real, Albus and Scorpius are basically Simon and Baz and you know they’re going to Discover Things About Themselves when they reach the right developmental stage.

Holo Writing at AWA 2016!

October 7, 2016 by hpholo Leave a Comment

We’re back and recovered from Anime Weekend Atlanta! This year was a little slower than our last year, but apparently election years always are (Thanks, Washington). Still, we had H.P.’s favorite location ever.

RIGHT NEXT TO THE FOOD TRUCKS.

And that was hardly the best thing about the con! Last AWA, only the first two books of the Seraphim Revival trilogy had been released. A lot of readers came to the Dealer’s Room looking for us specifically, and for a while Disciple of the Dead – the third in the trilogy – was our top seller! Naturally, we’re delighted that all of you liked the first two enough to seek us out.
AWA also saw the convention debut of The Wizard’s Way, which SOLD OUT halfway through the con!

Never has a box been so happy to be empty.

Several readers who bought it also came back the next day to say it was their new favorite series. Looks like we have a winner on our hands! If you’re among those who loved it, you’ll be delighted to learn that H.P. plans to start work on the sequel, The Wizard’s Circus, next week!
Speaking of writing, we had a lot of questions about upcoming books and projects, so for the benefit of those who weren’t able to be at the con, here’s are some answers.
Will there be a sequel to…?
We had lots of sequel questions, especially about our earliest books!
The Dragons of Jupiter – Jacob intends to follow Dragons with two sequels, The Dragons of Mars and The Dragon Revenant. Each book is roughly planned out in his head, but it’s just a matter of finding time to put it on paper!
Time Reavers – We’ve planned two sequels to Time Reavers, too – Mind Reavers and Slayer of Reavers. Jacob has already outlined Mind Reavers, but in efforts to get it out a little faster (and because collaborating on The Wizard’s Way was so much fun), he’s going to write it with H.P. once the first sequel to The Wizard’s Way is done.
Seraphim Revival (Bane of the Dead, Throne of the Dead, Disciple of the Dead) – For now, the trilogy is complete. However, if Jacob finds the time, he’d like to write a follow-up trilogy set 20 or so years after the main storyline that follows the children of the main characters. Again, finding the time is the challenge!
The Wizard’s Way – Officially, the series is called The Wizard’s Quartet, so four books are planned. H.P.’s project for the moment is the first sequel, The Wizard’s Circus – basically, Chaucey Goes to Wizard College – but it will eventually be followed by The Wizard’s Citadel and The Wizard’s End.
What are you working on now?
Jacob has several projects up in the air right now. His main project is splitting Humanity Machine into two books. You may recall that novel from a few years ago. Beta readers (and most importantly, his wife) wanted to see the end of the first draft expanded, and said expansion ended up requiring a second book to do it justice.
More excitingly, Jacob is also working on a SECRET PROJECT with David Weber, though, given that it is a SECRET PROJECT, you’re not supposed to know about it just yet. 😛
Where are the cosplay pictures?
Ok, no one actually asked this, but if you were perchance looking for the cosplay pictures H.P. usually takes at cons, they’re over on our Instagram page!
Well, as you can see above, there’s plenty of writing to be done, so we’re off to work on some books! See you next post! 😀

Countdown to The Wizard’s Way!

September 23, 2016 by hpholo Leave a Comment

It’s been eventful here at Holo HQ!
Stars aligned so that H.P. could transition to working full-time for Holo Writing, which means that you’re about to see many more updates, contests, giveaways, appearances, and yes, BOOKS.
Speaking of which, The Wizard’s Way is well on its way to being released! Comments from beta readers have come in, edits have been made, layout is complete, and now all we’re waiting for is that final glorious proof copy. Once we’ve affirmed its perfection, it’ll be time to release the Steelgore!

We love all our books, of course, but we’re especially excited to bring you this one.
Though Jacob contributed a lot of content, The Wizard’s Way is primarily H.P.’s weird, hyperactive brainchild, and in it, you’ll see a face of the Holoverse that you’ve never seen before. Namely the face involving fire-breathing steel lions, pug butlers, bear libraries, and lots of general mayhem. But the latter is nothing new. 😛
And hey, if you’d like to receive an update when the novel releases, be sure to join our mailing list!

The-Wizards-Way-Cover-FINAL-052416-2008-WEB — COMING SOON!

The Wizard’s Way – Cover Reveal!

May 28, 2016 by hpholo 1 Comment

Well, it’s been an adventurous month, but it takes more than a malfunctioning eyeball and a collapsed lung to stop me, which means that Draft #4 of The Wizard’s Way is DONE!
Our next step is to see what our beta readers have to say, apply their advice in the next round of edits, and then drop this bad boy – okay, bad but well-intentioned; Chaucey is complicated – on September 1^st!
Who’s Chaucey, you ask? Read on to find out—and then to get your first official look at the cover art!

coverartsmall — A heartwarming(?) tale of a boy and his swordfighting pug. Artwork by Mandy O’Brien.

J. Chaucey Thatcher has a monster inside him, but this is the least of his worries.
A murderer prowls the Iron City, slaying inventors. An angry mob storms close behind, blaming wizards. Any they find, they burn alive.
Chaucey is an inventor. He is also secretly a wizard, and the only person who can help with this secret was just murdered before his very eyes.
But when it comes to investigating, Chaucey is as dogged as his best friend is dog. With the help of his loyal pug butler, his sparky (almost? maybe?) girlfriend, and a sleuth of rambunctious bears, he has vowed to unravel the mystery of these murders and save the city from the grips of terror.
But the monster inside him burns for escape.
Will he save the Iron City? Or will the monster destroy it first?

And now, drum roll please…

…

Though really, forget drum rolls. Let’s bring out the whole band for our illustrator, Mandy O’Brien (aka Painted-Bees on DeviantArt, Tumblr, and Twitter).
I’d been following her art for years on Deviant Art (I mean LOOK AT THIS), so when I started pondering illustrators for a colorful fantasy adventure with two civilizations of talking animals, I didn’t have to ponder long. Her vibrant style combined with the animated quality of her art meshed perfectly with the world I’d pictured in the novel, and looking at these illustrations is like looking at characters that walked right out of my brain onto a computer screen!

Read about them this Fall!

Monsters. Murder. Swashbuckling Pug Butlers.

Coming September 2016.

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Holo Writing at SC ComiCon 2016!

April 30, 2016 by hpholo Leave a Comment

Another SC ComiCon has come and gone, and – as always – we had a great time! We premiered two new t-shirts (coming soon to the Etsy shop!) and the final cover of The Wizard’s Way (coming soon to this blog!). We also met several new fans, saw several familiar faces, and to answer several recurring questions:

Time Reavers and Dragons of Jupiter sequels are indeed in the works! In fact, Jacob recently finished the outline for Mind Reavers (that is, Time Reavers 2)- but the novel itself is currently in the queue behind:
Splitting Humanity Machine into 2 books (Remember that one?)
Finishing the final draft of The Wizard’s Way
Writing a story for an upcoming Safehold anthology
And a Super Cool Super Secret Project

So, it will be some time before Mind Reavers happens, but expect lots of cool stuff in the meantime.
Of course, we also snapped some awesome cosplay pics!

deathnote — An excellent *Death Note* cosplay group! (THAT RYUK.) 😀

arielursula — A fabulous Ariel and Ursula!

We don’t have nearly as many this year, though, because HP is master-in-chief of cosplay fangirling, and she actually couldn’t see for most of the con. Turns out what we thought to be a persistently weird contact lens was actually a detached retina (#conlife #partyhard).
Then, because she likes to multitask, she suffered a spontaneous partial lung collapse 5 days into recovery, spent 10 days in the hospital, and is now at home recovering from that with a bunch of ice cream, Netflix, and a load of editing to do.
As you can see, it’s already been a busy con season, and we haven’t even made our second appearance!
We’ll be at Free Comic Book Day at The Tangled Web on Saturday, May 7th @ 8am, so if you missed us at SC ComiCon, be sure to stop by! 😀

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies – Movie Review

February 11, 2016 by hpholo Leave a Comment

I consider myself a connoisseur of terrible movies, an Austenite, and mildly interested in zombies, so there was no film that I as more excited to see this year than Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

I wasn’t let down – it was a hot mess – but is it a hot mess worth watching? That will depend on how much you enjoy any of its definitive elements.
First, you have to love bad movies, Pride and Prejudice, and zombies. There’s no way around that. It’s not a good movie by any stretch of the imagination; the zombie designs are appropriately gross and their heads explode nicely, but the acting is only okay, some of the costume choices look like an anachronistic costume closet dump, the plot is so jankily handled that it reads like Pride and Prejudice Spark Notes with a few pages ripped out, and with two notable exceptions, nearly every role is horribly (and hilariously) miscast.
The casting is easily the most egregious flaw in (slash-greatest-strength-of) this movie. When Mr. Collins is the most interesting character in your P&P adaptation, you’re doing it wrong. When you see Mr. Darcy for the first time and wonder why Mr. Collins is showing up so early, you’re doing it APOCALYPTICALLY wrong.

mrdarcynope — Not that Sam Riley isn’t cute; he’s just not Colin Firth.

Jane was hard to pick out from the other Bennet sisters because all of them are generically pretty (except Mary, who was perfect). Bingley looked like an escapee from a boy band. Wickham looked like Gaston’s smarmy middle-aged cousin. Mrs. Bennet is the best-looking and least-annoying Mrs. Bennet ever (so, not Mrs. Bennet at all. More like a Real Housewife of Longbourn), and Mr. Bennet is Tywin Lannister (and Havelock Vetinari!) but spends the whole movie looking harried rather than doing anything remotely interesting. He doesn’t even have good sass. Honestly, the awfulness of the casting went to such depths that I wondered if it was intentional, but even if not, it becomes one of the funniest parts of the film.
That said, two bits of casting were perfect (if not entirely accurate): Matt Smith has the admirable distinction of being the only likable Mr. Collins in the history of P&P, managing to turn a truly cringe-worthy character into someone absolutely adorkable. For real, I’d tap that Mr. Collins.

mrcollinsyep — Matt Smith brings the added advantage of letting the viewer imagine the movie as a lost literary episode of *Doctor Who*.

Lena Headey as Catherine de Bourgh (LANNISTER FAM REPRESENT!) is a delight, though this may have more to do with the fact that this Catherine de Bourgh is a kickass, eyepatch-wearing, zombie-killing savior of the realm rather than an old arrogant fart.

catherinedebourghftw — Let’s be honest; that eyepatch is the best character in this movie.

But you have to know that Catherine de Bourgh is an old arrogant fart to begin with to even appreciate what she does, which highlights one of the film’s legitimate problems.
It’s not enough to have read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies or even Pride and Prejudice itself. You almost have to be steeped in the teas of Pride and Prejudice fandom (miniseries, movies, and all) to get any true enjoyment out of this movie – either so you can appreciate the parody when it happens well (i.e. Catherine de Bourgh), or so you can appreciate when it goes wrong (i.e. in how not-Colin Firth Mr. Darcy is). Someone involved in production was obviously a P&P fan because they knew to include a scene of Mr. Darcy jumping into a lake. I don’t think enough people involved were fans, though. Otherwise Mr. Darcy would have been hot and Wickham would have at least been deceptively good-looking.
The film has some tonal issues, too. It can never decide whether it wants to be a tongue-in-cheek action movie, a straight-up parody of P&P and its fandom, or a clever piece of alternate universe fiction. This is a movie in which the opening scene clearly and expertly sets up the alternate circumstances of this universe (Mr. Darcy, a skilled zombie hunter in this fiction, crashes the hell out of a party where a zombie is present) and the first battle scene sets up the Bennet sisters as certified zombie-killing badasses. There’s also a lot of hinting at the possible intelligence exhibited by the zombies in question, but before any of that can be explored, the movie quickly shifts away from it, hurries through iconic P&P scenes, or leaps to a forced bit of humor (Did we really need to hear Charlotte Lucas snoring that long?).
Fortunately, not all of the humor is forced. The simple premise of combining Regency England with zombies naturally makes the film hilarious, and I have to admit I spent most of the film laughing entirely at small changes that were made to the Regency environment – estates surrounded by brutal-looking spikes, ladies of quality talking about martial arts they studied in China or Japan, Mr. Darcy himself being a prized zombie hunter rather than just rich, etc. The exaggerated extent to which some characters are played is brilliant, too. You know exactly who Charlotte Bingley is the moment you see her sour face at the Netherfield ball. Mr. Darcy’s sickly sister Georgiana communicates entirely through groans. When Mrs. Bennet embarrasses the family, she does it hardcore, sprawled all over a couch like a drunk socialite. And then there’s the iconic proposal scene, wherein Lizzie answers Mr. Darcy’s backhanded offer with a fistfight. And Catherine de Bourgh’s subsequent (and in this case, literal) attack on Lizzie, wherein Lizzie beats de Bourgh’s thug by dropping a ceiling on him.
Really, the film is at its absolute best when it’s parodying the novel of manners Austen fans have come to know and obsess over. It loses a lot of its entertainment value in its second half, where it diverges from both sets of source material to become a more drama- and action-oriented film. While some of its changes were admittedly cool (avoiding spoilers, St. Lazarus), they would have worked better in a film that viewed itself as serious alternate fiction from the get-go, rather than a comedy. And let’s face it, all of us are going to see this movie for the comedy. None of us are going to see it to watch Lizzie cry dramatically over Mr. Darcy’s unconscious body on an exploded bridge.
All this said, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is certainly not for everyone. But if you’re one of those readers who leapt with joy at the announcement of the book and then did an astonished happy dance at the announcement of the movie, you already know it’s for you. It’s not nearly as good as it could have been, but let’s face it, at the end of it all, we have both this and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, which is more alternate history/classic movie weirdness than we ever thought we’d get. It’s not for everyone because it was made for us, and that makes it a special movie.
Still one that’s better watched on Netflix than on the end of a $15 movie ticket, though.
P.S. Here’s the perfect Mr. Darcy and the perfect Lake Scene because no way am I going to pass up an excuse to post this masterpiece.

The Story of Owen – Book Review

December 29, 2015 by hpholo Leave a Comment

In an alternate version of the present day, the world has a dragon problem. Dragons are drawn to the carbon emitted by burning fuel, which means that wherever there’s a fire, a car, or any sort of industry, a dragon will come looking to feast. Fortunately, for as long as there have been dragons, there has been a proud tradition of dragon slayers.
These days, most dragon slayers work in cities, contracted by governments and corporations to protect the considerable interests in these carbon-heavy environments. This is awesome for people who live in cities (least of all because it results in cool, if ill-advised, iPhone videos. And, you know, safety from dragons). People in the country don’t have it so easy.
This is why it’s “like freaking Mardi Gras” when injury brings Lottie Thorskard to her rural hometown of Trondheim. She’s the most famous dragon slayer of her day, and brings with her a fellow dragon-slayer brother and her sixteen-year-old nephew, Owen. Wimpy and bad at algebra and English, Owen is like many teenage boys, except for one big difference. When he’s not being tutored, he’s training to fight the dragons of rural Canada, and his tutor-turned-bard, Siobhan McQuaid, is ready to sing him into legend.
E. K. Johnston’s The Story of Owen: Dragon Slayer of Trondheim has Starred Reviews galore and won a Morris Award this year, so it has a lot going for it. However, despite its impressive pedigree, my reactions to it were mixed. Ultimately, I liked the idea of the novel more than I liked its execution. When it was at its best, though, I enjoyed it quite a lot.
Contrary to its title, The Story of Owen is less the story of Owen, more the-story-of-a-quirky-speculative-version-of-a-dragon-ravaged-world-but-mostly-rural-Canada. It’s obvious that Johnston had a lot of fun working dragons into the history of our world, as every other chapter takes a break from the story to pour new tidbits upon the reader. Take this excerpt, outlining one of the story’s conflicts, as an example:

Most postmodernists blame the decline of the dracono-bardic tradition on the sudden and soaring popularity of the Beatles. The Lads from Liverpool were exactly that: four guys with accents who sang about love and truth, who never once mentioned a dragon slayer. The world split around them. There were many who loved the simplicity of the music, the harmonies and the earnest quality of the lyrics. And there were many who were afraid of the example they were setting.
For the first time since Shakespeare…the English-speaking world was confronted by a cultural phenomenon that was insanely popular and entirely bereft of danger. An entire generation of young people…threw themselves at the Beatles, much to the concern of their elders, who worried about the effect listening to the Beatles’ music might incur.

Note all the ellipses. Then imagine another sentence or two in their places. This to say, for patient readers who enjoy intensely detailed world-building, The Story of Owen is a delightful read. All this world-building, though, presents a big hurdle to less patient readers; Johnston often builds her world at the expense of everything else in the story. Truly, the world is more of a character than the actual characters, and readers have to take in a lot of fictional history before they can begin to process the significance of what the characters are up to.
And for me, though the characters were interesting, they weren’t nearly as interesting as the world in which they live. For people who live in a world consumed by dragons, they’re all astonishingly normal. Here’s where my opinions become extremely mixed. On the one hand, it was cool to read that normalcy. In this world, dragons are just another problem occurring in nature, like tornadoes or bears wandering into the neighborhood. People have plans for how to handle them. This chillness in the face of scaly, fiery death is amusing at first; the downside is that it becomes a little boring to read about after a while. Also, whatever tension is created when Owen actually fights a dragon is often counteracted by the way Siobhan tells the stories, beginning by narrating the version that she told the media (which is heroic), and then telling readers what actually happened (which, while still heroic, is less climactic). The climax itself, too, runs so smoothly and with such little threat to the lives of the defended population that there’s not much tension even there. The characters are simply too competent! (However, this does render a tragic twist at the end that much more unexpected.)
All this said, though I was comparatively indifferent to the characters, and though I found the pacing a bit janky, the world was interesting enough that I plowed to the end of the novel on the momentum of it alone. Most of the other things that I enjoyed about the novel are subtler. You wouldn’t know it from the cover, but Owen is biracial—Venezuelan-Canadian—and a significant lesbian relationship within his family is classily handled. Also, Siobhan is intensely thoughtful about music in the way that only an enthusiastic teenager can be; though it reads awkwardly at times—as when she describes her emotions in terms of the instruments that would play them—it’s not unrealistic for a creative teenage narrator.
It also makes her a much more convincing bard. Character-wise, the novel is the Story of Siobhan learning to become a bard even more than it is the Story of Owen learning to slay dragons! The novel is even (loosely) structured in a way that harkens back to the oral traditions that conveyed Beowulf and monster-fighting epics like it, which was a neat touch, even if we never actually see any of Siobhan’s compositions.
The Story of Owen, then, is an ambitious novel. Sometimes it falters under the weight of its own ambitions. Still, overall it’s a noble and amusing effort. It’s not for everyone, but readers who have the patience to give it a chance will find it rewarding.
***
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Princess Knight, Part I – Graphic Novel Review

December 27, 2015 by hpholo Leave a Comment

Before God sends children down from Heaven, he gives them hearts. A child who swallows a blue heart will be a “brave boy,” while a child who swallows a red heart will be a “graceful girl.” However, when the mischievous angel Tink decides to play a trick, a child destined to be a girl ends up with both, and she’s on her way to being born before God can stop it. God thus curses Tink to life on Earth as a human; the only way for Tink to become an angel again is to reclaim the girl’s boy heart.
This task is not as easy as it seems, for the girl has just been born to the royal family of Silverland. This family needs a boy to continue the royal line, or else risk being usurped by the evil Duke Duralumin. The king and queen thus decide to keep her true gender secret, raising her as Prince Sapphire to protect their crown. Thus begins a fast-paced tale of adventure, mistaken genders, and the hijinks that ensue.

I usually don’t enjoy gender-bender manga, as the gender-bending aspect is often played for silly humor, but Osamu Tezuka’s Princess Knight, Part I is a rare exception. It reads like a twist on even modern fairy tales, where the princess is both damsel in distress and literally her own prince, and where her ever-changing gender is a source of legitimate drama, rather than an amusing plot point.
This permeates nearly every conflict she faces. Most prominently, the constant threat of Duralumin finding out that she’s not really a prince looms heavily, not only because of what it means for her but what it could mean for the kingdom. This conflict affects her in even small, if convoluted ways, too. At one point, a prince of a neighboring kingdom falls in love with her female “disguise,” only to pledge to kill Prince Sapphire in a later (unrelated) plot twist, not realizing that he and “the flaxen-haired maiden” are one and the same. (Talk about a complicated relationship!)
Despite the gendered nature of its plot, though, the novel is surprisingly unconcerned with gender roles or politics (at least, beyond the basic OMG A GIRL CAN’T RULE A KINGDOM LET’s PANIC ABOUT THAT trope). The closest it comes to commenting on such topics is in a scene where Sapphire briefly loses her boy heart and thus, with only the girl heart remaining, becomes weak. At first the scene inspires an “UGH of course she would become all faint and pansylike without her boy heart,” but upon rereading, it also begs the question, “Is it better to have the associated qualities of only one gender? Or is it better to have a combination of both?” Though it’s a small scene and a simple question, it’s thematically very relevant, and the whole book is a positive answer to this question.
Refreshingly, it’s also not loudly self-aware of its theme, like many Strong Female Character books can be. More than anything, the novel is concerned with taking readers on an adventuresome romp through a fairy-tale-inspired fantasy land, rather than offering any commentary at all. And romp it does! Sapphire teams up with pirates, fights evil witches, swordfights through pretty much everything, and never once stops being anything but a swashbuckling hero/heroine (even though she occasionally does stop to cry over stuff). At 346 pages, it’s a pretty good size for a graphic novel, and yet I was still surprised by how much action was packed into it.
Because of its structure, Princess Knight is bound to appeal to both male and female readers who like this kind of story. There are some hurdles to jump, though, especially for readers who are accustomed to modern manga. Tezuka’s art, while iconic, may look a bit too cartoony and dated for some readers today. In fact, I’d initially avoided his work myself for that reason. Something about the art in Princess Knight, though, was absolutely charming to me, perhaps because it matched the storybook flair of the setting so well. It should also be noted that the art is printed very cleanly, and though the style is simplistic, many of the panels are quite pretty to look at. Another hurdle is the themed naming of the bad guys—Duke Duralumin (a type of alloy), Lord Plastic, Lord Nylon—which doesn’t contribute anything to the story other than inexplicable goofiness. (There are plenty of other goofy elements in the story, but they’re much better handled than this.) Lord Nylon also has a lisp that is rather insensitively played for humor, but it also contributes to a significant early plot point, so it’s not like it’s there without a reason. Still, after that plot point happens, it does read a bit unkindly.
These bumps are minor compared to the delight that is the rest of the book, though. With plenty of adventure, several unexpected twists, and a fun storybook quality, Princess Knight has quickly become one of my favorites.