Let's List Again...Like We Did Last Winter...

Spent last night fighting my sinuses, which I'm still sort of doing, and this morning watching the first two episodes of legendary cancelled show The Inside, probably best described as a trial run for Criminal Minds in which the BAU consists of Clarice Starling (if she'd been kidnapped as a kid, spent a year being groomed either as an apprentice or a spouse by a still-uncaught unsub, and somehow managed to free herself without anyone else's help), Ed Exley and Dudley Smith crossed with Hannibal Lecter, plus a wisecracking redhead and Adam Baldwin.

The showpiece of the narrative is the weird OT3 developed between boss "Web" Webster (Peter Coyote), victim-turned-predator's-predator Rebecca Locke (Rachel Nichols) and upstanding young man with a conscience Paul Ryan (Jay Harrington); Webster's been grooming Rebecca from afar since she applied to the FBI, knowing her special mix of pattern-recognition, data-mining and instinctual empathy for both sides of the equation will drive her to constantly put herself in the sort of danger that cracks cases--she's a cold, empty, angry little justice-golem cobbled together from scar tissue and lies, so traumatized she barely has any time to feel her own fear. But she sure is pretty, which helps draw/bond Ryan to her, and sparks the duel of prospective "ownership" between puppet-master Webster and Ryan the white knight protector: "Look after her," Webster says, at the end of the pilot. "You can be sure of it," Ryan replies. Naturally, neither thinks to ask Rebecca her thoughts on the matter, assuming she even has any...

So yeah, makes a sort of "sense" that CM has apparently now hired Nichols to replace JJ (swapping out one blonde for another), casting her as a profiler whose father turned out to be a serial killer, which naturally gives her wound-based superpowers. I've heard from women who hate this trope and women who love this trope in equal measure, though I have to wonder whether or not the lingering appeal of The Inside is basically that Rebecca genuinely is the protagonist, the person who the show is based around--and you just don't get that, most of the time. Ever, really, even now. (A factor which probably lead directly to its cancellation, along with/as much as the quite amazing routine perversity of its subject-matter; still, any show that takes its cues from Se7en by way of CSI and has male-on-male rape as the climax in Episode frickin' Two is bound to get at least part of my vote.;))

Okay, so, on with the round-up. Today: Books.

I re-read a lot of stuff this year, caught up with various authors (the earlier work of Gary Braunbeck, for example) and also spent a ridiculous amount of time reading either for complete brain-death or various awards--the Sunburst at the start of the year, vs. the Shirley Jacksons right now. And I'm not even vaguely done with that latter process, either, though I intend to jack it up fairly soon, so don't expect to see many of the free books I've been getting through the mail on here. Which leaves the things I enjoyed most, as follows--

Bitter Seeds, Ian Tregillis
The Reapers Are The Angels, Alden Bell
Sandman Slim and Kill the Dead, Richard Kadrey
The Drowning City and The Bone Palace, Amanda Downum
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N.K. Jemisin
House of Windows, John Lagan
Johannes Cabal the Necromancer, Jonathan L. Howard
A Good and Happy Child, Justin Evans
A Dark Matter, Peter Straub
Apartment 16, Adam LG Nevill
Northwest Passages, Barbara Roden
Indigo Springs, A.M. Dellamonica
Stealing Fire, Jo Graham
The Native Star, M.K. Hobson
Mr Shivers, Robert Jackson Bennett

I wish I'd liked The Broken Kingdoms better, but I didn't overall (though that doesn't mean I won't read the next instalment). The Bone Palace, OTOH, was even better than its predecessor, and I'm very much hoping we see some of those characters again. Johannes Cabal, also, was a wonderful surprise--I'm not normally too into horror-comedy, but this is dry as dust, hilarious and black to the max, with a wonderfully dreadful main character and a cast of total freaks; can't wait to read the sequel. Northwest Passages is that rare single-author collection that works all the way through, as opposed to throwing up amazing stories here and there; my failure to pass it through the Sunbursts' gullet still haunts me. Oh, and intertribal: A Good and Happy Child is about a male possession-victim...maybe. Or possibly just a guy with problems whose family tends to cast said problems in Devil-got-ya terms. One way or the other, very cool.

Aaaand...again, I am tired, so if you want to know more about the rest, ask. I've mentioned a lot of them here already.

Now: Off to arrange a visit from the plumber...