Really there was no choice, but when two friends go see a movie they inevitably try to pick a movie that the other would like most. So my friend tried to suggest the former and I tried to suggest the latter, but for me, I did not want to see Die Harder, unless it was the name of a weird porno. It was not, though. Why would anyone wasn't to see an action flick brought to you by someone who has grandchildren pretending to be a young sturdily man.
If it had been about a new actor who was in their sixties or seventies who was playing someone in their sixties or seventies it would have been different. Bruce Willis, you are old are old and that is not a bad thing. You might be a good actor and if you are, take a role that can show your thespian skills; I might even watch it. If you don't have any acting skills, go and make an action film with plenty of CGI graphic explosions and lots of brainless shoot out scenes…oh.
So we went and watched Beautiful Creatures, which is a sappy sounding movie about teenage love, where wet works means it is a tear jerker and not a blood bath. Let me be clear, it was not a brainless movie. It was a Chick Flick, but I am a chick flick fan, I cried, my friend did not. It was my type of film, there was magic and there was PG-11 love scenes, kissing only. Fantasy yes, Capitol "R" for Romance. It was something like the Twilight movies, something I have never seen, not will I, but it had that feel.
It was based in an exotic location, an isolated rural town in the deep south, with people who tried to relive the the past that they had never lived, but a better time, in their minds, cloaked by the passage of over a century. It looks like my town, the past was it's heyday and the people are filled with dreams that they will never act upon. In this mix of deep southern velleity and righting religious fever, drops the new girl who has a reputation based on speculation and fear of new things from old money. And a hint of magic…
Destiny draws nastily down upon the local boy who falls in love with the young damsel and in pseudo-Shakespearian Romeo and Juliet, the two worlds fight to keep them apart. Barriers placed between them, no one with a lesser passion could fight, but because they do not have a lesser passion they cut through those roadblocks.
I knew all the actors, but I could not place them, any of them. If any had been cast in roles from previous flicks, they were not in my mind. My friend could only identify one, but the rest felt familiar too. Such were that in this movie that they felt as part of the tableau presented.
The graphics were pushed the art to the maximum. The magic was great and oddly more plausible in how it was presented with the computer magic. Everything flowed. The ending was a twist.
I then went home and picked up a book that I had need caressing for a week and guzzled the words down in a few quick draughts. Alloy Law, by Brandon Sanderson, was a continuation of another series he wrote called the Mistborn trilogy. It was a stand alone and clearly the first book in a new trilogy, based in the same world but in a different time that was no longer medieval in nature and more early twentieth century, but with the same magic, burning metals internally to create specific effects. Gone is the fight to end the millennium of oppressive rule and in comes a detective slash western gunfighter.
It was awesome.
It had a twist different from the original series combining two different magic styles together in a complementary fashion. Adding technology, guns, automobiles, trains and early skyscraper technology. The setting had the feel of the Nineteen Twenties with race to build the tallest building in New York City, in the Wild West, with magic. There was romance, but with a twist. Characters were complex, strong male and female characters. Strangely, the main character was my age, which really helped draw me into the character. Most characters in books are young people and he was not. Nice.
Sanderson is clearly improving his writing as he ages and writes. He has not fallen into the trap that most, if not all writers fall into, one setting, one group of laws that govern the world. He, Sanderson, has managed to write many different series with their different magic styles, proof of the fecundity of his mind; how I idolize him.
I do believe that while reading the previous series, Mistborn, would help, one need not invest in them to enjoy this book.
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