Avengers: Endgame

Saw it.

No spoilers here. Just needed to say that I really, really liked it. Fun movie. There's a climactic moment that made me squee. Oh, there were a few plot holes (kinda big ones) but overall I have to say I really liked how they tied several stories together.

A scattering of topics

• Have gotten a lesson this week in bureaucracy. Trying to figure out what my next step is to get a proper resolution. I hate this crap.
• I've come to the conclusion that I'm criminally out-of-shape. Ridiculously so. I shouldn't be this out-of-shape. I mean, I fairly regularly practice martial arts and all that. Turns out if you only do a martial arts class a couple of days a week and do fuck all for the other five days, you don't really progress very much. So it's time to up my game. Went jogging today and... wow do I have a ways to go!
• I've been given an amazing gift: a Traumahawk! Yes, that's right, I have another Zombie Tool! Oh glory day! This thing is a brutal bit of metallic awesome! I'm amazed I haven't broken anything in my apartment (or cut off a limb). Yet.
• I think I'm obsessed with bullet points.

Obligatory April post

Yeah.

So I finished "A Veil of Spears", the third book of the "Shattered Sands" series by Bradley P. Beaulieu. Goddamn that series is getting intense! The last book is due around July and I simply cannot wait!

I just finished (like an hour ago) "Tiamat's Wrath" by James S.A. Corey. Book 8 in "The Expanse" may well be the best of the series thus far. I can't recall being so utterly drawn into a novel in a long time. The sheer, mind-boggling, amount of shit that went down in that 500+ pages of awesome has left me in awe. I'm not ashamed to admit there was a point when I had to close the book 'cause something happened that made me get a bit choked up.

Oh, and now it's suddenly April. It's six days into April. 2019 seems to be burning along at a disturbingly-fast clip. Not sure how to process that.

WTF?

How is it over halfway through March already?

Seriously, HOW THE HELL DID MARCH GET SO FAR ALONG????

I swear it was twenty seconds ago when I looked up and it was mid-February. 2019 is moving faster than I'm comfortable with.

Captain Marvel

I saw Captain Marvel last night.

Damn that was a fun movie! I'll admit I was a little worried the film was over-hyped, but I have to say that Brie Larson did a fantastic job as Carol Danvers. Hell, the entire cast was solid. The story did a good job of translating her weird origin (in comics) to film. The fights and effects were up to the normal standard of fantastic.

There were a couple of points where I felt the writers were being a bit too self-referential, but I guess I should have expected that. It certainly didn't detract from how enjoyable the film was.

Thoughts on Alita: Battle Angel

I caught Alita: Battle Angel the other night. If you've seen the trailers, you pretty much understand this movie. If the trailer didn't illuminate you, the movie isn't really going to help. It was a fun action flick with great effects and fantastic fights. It would have been greatly improved by removing all speaking scenes outside of battle-banter. Any and all attempts at exposition or plot development should especially be purged.

Get past all that, and it's a solid flick. Loved it.

A Random February Brain Dump

Well this has been a peculiar winter. After a few years of unseasonably-warm Januarys and Februarys, I have to admit I'm taken aback by actual cold weather in February! Hell, there's snow on the mountains around the San Francisco Bay Area! An uncommon occurrence.

2019 has brought me a new fiction series I'm hooked on: the Shattered Sands series by Bradley P Beaulieu. A story of Ceda, a young, badass, warrior woman hell-bent on avenging her mother's death, the story's got some fascinating (and sometimes disturbing) twists and turns in the rich, vaguely Arabian/Persian world Beaulieu has created. I've burned through the first two books ("Twelve Kings in Sharakhai" and "Blood on the Sands") and now await the remaining two books in the series, out this year. There's novellas that are doing a delightful job of keeping me busy as I await their publication.

Going to be a good year for reading material, all told. The next Expanse book is out next month, along with John Gwynne's next novel. I've finally given in and started reading "Red Sister" by Mark Lawrence (recommended by several friends). I'm hooked and plan to get the rest of that series as well.

So I guess next week we find out if we're having another government shutdown while the orange man-baby debates having another tantrum over funding his medieval ego-toy. Sigh.