Angel

Demons Trilogy #1:
The Demon's Lexicon
by Sarah Rees Brennan

Nick and his brother, Alan, have spent their lives on the run from magic. Their father was murdered, and their mother was driven mad by magicians and the demons who give them power. The magicians are hunting the Ryves family for a charm that Nick's mother stole -- a charm that keeps her alive -- and they want it badly enough to kill again.
Danger draws even closer when a brother and sister come to the Ryves family for help. The boy wears a demon's mark, a sign of death that almost nothing can erase...and when Alan also gets marked by a demon, Nick is des-perate to save him. The only way to do that is to kill one of the magicians they have been hiding from for so long.
Ensnared in a deadly game of cat and mouse, Nick starts to suspect that his brother is telling him lie after lie about their past. As the magicians' Circle closes in on their family, Nick uncovers the secret that could destroy them all.
This is the Demon's Lexicon. Turn the page.

Overall Rating 3.5/5
Though I found some of the characters compelling and original, the author's world-building and writing was strained and felt incomplete. The characters were constantly in danger of losing consistency, and some of the twists and turns thus were mildly confusing. However, it was a fun read, with plenty of hilariously snappy dialogue.

( read the full review )

Love is the Higher Law
by David Levithan

First there is a Before, and then there is an After...
The lives of three teens — Claire, Jasper, and Peter — are altered forever on September 11, 2001. Claire, a high school junior, has to get to her younger brother in his classroom. Jasper, a college sophomore from Brooklyn, wakes to his parents’ frantic calls from Korea, wondering if he’s okay. Peter, a classmate of Claire’s, has to make his way back to school as everything happens around him.
Here are three teens whose intertwining lives are reshaped by this catastrophic event. As each gets to know the other, their moments become wound around each other’s in a way that leads to new understandings, new friendships, and new levels of awareness for the world around them and the people close by.

Overall Rating 4.5/5
Jasper steals the spotlight as the sarcastic, gay Korean-American University student who finds himself conflicted between accepting the well-meaning comfort offered by people who couldn't relate to his experiences, or pushing them away with jokes and reassurances. Peter is far from the token love interest as his voice comes to life through his love of music and the emotions songs and lyrics stir within him. Claire is the mutual acquaintance that brings the two closer together, but while she is not entirely negligible, I was disappointed in her role as the author's preacher. While I was quite moved by the messages of love and peace, I felt that the stark reality of the actual consequences in the aftermath (anger, hatred, war) should not have been so easily omitted.

( read the full review )

So, encouraged by Ah Yuan, I've decided to participate in this Chromatic Recasting meme. I actually really really wanted to do one for Let the Right One In (THE MOST AMAZING, ADORABLE, INTENSE, REALISTIC, GENDER-DEFYING VAMPIRE MOVIE YOU WILL EVER NEED TO SEE), but promptly realized I didn't know that many grade-school-looking actors, American, Asian, or otherwise lol.

So, instead, I've turned to my recent obsession, the Sherlock Holmes series! Prior to the 2009 movie (RDJ SO MUCH LOVE ♥), I had been a huge fan of Hound of the Baskervilles - I literally reread it multiple times per day when the mood hit me lol - so my choices are also influenced by the original novels as well. However, the moment I decided Takeshi Kaneshiro would be my Holmes, my actor choices immediately gravitated towards his co-actors from the recent John Woo epic Red Cliff. Okay, I can probably explain why most of my choices are actors from this awesome awesome movie: John Woo went ahead and casted some gorgeous and talented people. They're also multi-ethnic (to a degree)! Takeshi and Nakamura from Japan, Tony from Hong Kong, Lin Chilin and Zhang Zhen from Taiwan, and Hu Jun, Zhao Wei, Zhang FengYi, etc. from mainland China. As someone who watches all different facets of East Asian media, I've seen most of these actors in at least one film before, all of them quite memorable. So I'm not just randomly excusing myself to recast one movie into another fandom, really XD;

And thus, onto my Sherlock Holmes Chromatic Recast, aka "the meme wherefor I ended up recasting Red Cliff actors into Sherlock Holmes"!




( Chromatic Recast Meme: Red Cliff → Sherlock Holmes )

Um so, I'm not sure how many people have actually watched Red Cliff and/or Sherlock Holmes (2009), but I definitely had fun mixing up the roles =D

8min trailer for Fantasy Zhu Xian



on the one hand it is gorgeous in terms of actors and special effects, on the other I'm going OMGWTFBBQ?! through the entire trailer because it is just THAT wacky
a love story of two people separated by 200 years and the girl losing her memory, some evil puppeteer dude with a child's toy (I LOLed really loudly at that), weird flashbacks, emo lurking/stalking, but did I mention it is very pretty???
granted, this is based off of a popular Chinese online fantasy RPG, so the storylines are supposed to be half-baked and vague...
I would watch this if I just happen to see it on TV, if only for the squishy Hu Ge and his man-pain, but I'm not in China atm...such a dilemma =T

okay, here's a few hundred words of what I've got done of the prologue so far:

Red Threads, Book 1: No Faith
Summary: Half a millennia ago the Elemental Beasts were born from the gradual concentration of four elements in the east, south, west, and north corners of the mortal realm. While magnificent, they were as impassive to mortal life as the natural disasters they embody, and were eventually ordered to be imprisoned in the underworld by the Jade Emperor of the immortals. As punishment, they were stripped of their immortality and condemned to numerous lifetimes of the very suffering they had caused.

Over the centuries, as the mortal realm slowly returned to peace and prosperity, the beasts and the terrors they wrought faded from the mortals’ memories， until they remained no more than a faraway legend.

Now, five hundred years later, their spirits have been reborn as five mortal beings, each struggling through their own trials of redemption, and each connected to the other by a red thread of fate. Caught on either side of the conflict between the rénlèi (humans) and yāojīng (nonhuman entities that can take on human form) will fate bring them together as friends, or enemies?

there was a library book sale this weekend downtown, so I went and tried to pick up some good books. problem was, they didn't have a YA/adults fiction section, only something vague called "general fiction" WTF. also, I went for the last few hours on the last day of the sale so I guess pickings weren't great, but still...I only got one book.


The Walking Boy by Lydia Kwa
THIS HARDCOVER COST ME ONLY 50 CENTS.
erm...yeah. not that it sounds terribly exciting or anything (it's about a hermaphrodite child and his journey to find his master's lover or somewhat?), but I'm very interested in the premises with the first/last female emperor of China (the story is based on historical facts) and I'm using it as consulting material for my own story -- which I haven't forgotten, really.

so yeah, the book sale was at a remote corner of the downtown area, and the buses only came once every half-hour, so I decided to walk back up towards my campus in search of lunch/dinner. there were various other used bookstores along the street too ( so I picked up a few more bargain-ish books )

the book salesman said I had a broad spectrum of tastes XD;

ate lunch/dinner at the asian vegetarian restaurant, their pseudo-meat is actually quite good.
I think I'm becoming addicted to pineapple + rice actually, I had quite a few meals with them in various combinations over the summer, and today's dish was Pineapple with (Veggie) Chicken Fried Rice. yum ♥

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also, I've become officially addicted to Battlestar Galactica.



I technically blame it on my sci-fi class, though we only had a screening of an episode from the '78 series ('04 series screening is this week).
technically, BSG is sorta like Stargate in the spaceships trapped in space and survival themes, but I love BSG way more because I love the characters (most of them anyways), even if I can hate them at times, the show has a way of making you realize that everyone has their problems and situational pressures that push them to do the things they do.
favorite is Starbuck obviously, she is so kickass, I have a girl-crush on her ♥ she's the kind of character who sometimes defies categorization of gender. there's also a lot of gender role reversal here, where Apollo seems the pushover/sympathetic "talker of feelings" while Starbuck is the arrogant and aggressive "don't wanna talk 'bout it" kinda person. I also like how Apollo and Starbuck are always friends first, saving each other and generally goofing around like they're kids, it's very rare to find another guy-girl pair like them on TV.
also, lots of philosophy on identity, what is "human", war, responsibility, forgiveness, and some very plausible military strategic plans for their battles. the use of "low-level" technology also makes the plot just that much more frightening since it makes the "future" (robots rebelling and massacring humans) seem just that much more eminent and possible as opposed to if they had the ships outfitted with much more advanced technology to suggest that we had more time to prevent this.

I'm on season 3 right now though, and the show's "feel" seems to have shifted a LOT (more due to the setting and the separation of key characters I guess), but I hope they return to the original pace soon, I want the kickass Starbuck back T-T

I just went on a spree and reviewed a bunch of stuff on my Shelfari account:
♥ manga Saiyuki
♥ manga Saiyuki RELOAD (sequel)
♥ manga Gintama
♥ manga One Piece
♥ novel The Black Swan by Mercedes Lackey
♥ novel Kingdom Come by J.G. Ballard [read for class]
I wonder if I'm taking manga way too seriously when I write longer reviews for them than the novels I read...compared to the other reviewers I seem to be very ranty =X

little asian-representation-in-american-media debate over at wingstodust's post here 8D
it is of course impossible to look at the issue without bias though =T

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watched Romero's 1978 Dawn of the Dead for consumerism class today 8D
the action scenes were pretty cheesy, and the "gore" wasn't really that gorey (realistically), but it was pretty suspenseful at times~
( very spoilery rant )