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Book vs. Movie: Ready Player One

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RP1 movie vs book

I watched the movie about a week and a half after I finished the book. At first, I wanted to watch the movie quickly, before I forgot details about the book. Only a few minutes into the movie, I thought it might have been better to have waited several months (or more) to watch the movie. Maybe forgetting the details of the book would have allowed me to enjoy it in its own right. I understand that movies adapted from books have to be changed for various reasons, whether that’s to shorten the story, to add excitement, or even because a lot of what happens in the book is internal (which would be fairly hard/boring to show). And there are other reasons too. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it!

In my review of the book, I gave it a rating of 3.5 out of 5. It’s intriguing to me that the movie actually gave me more appreciation for the book. I’d probably rate it higher now. As with other posts I’ve made, some of my notes about what I didn’t care for in the movie are personal preference. Some of them, though, are places where I don’t think the movie did justice to the book, or even where I felt the movie just didn’t do well in general. I am going to give my notes, but without too much detail, mostly because my list is a little too long to go into much detail here. These are by no means all of the differences between the book and the movie, just the ones that bothered me. Also, I’m splitting these notes into things that aren’t too spoilery (shown first), and then notes that I feel would spoil either the book or movie enough to give a proper warning for.

Note: There are a lot, so it probably seems like I’m ranting. Well, I am. Again, I am well aware that movie adaptations are often very different from the book. If you think I’m being unfair, that’s fine. I didn’t realize how many notes I had about this until I started writing them down, and I considered cutting it short. But in the end, I decided to keep them all (and frankly, there may be some I forgot). So read on, or jump ship right now; it’s up to you!

  • From the very beginning of the movie, the atmosphere didn’t feel right to me. When I read the book, I got a feeling of desolation and isolation in the real world, especially where Wade lived. People didn’t go out much, because they could do much more from the comfort of their couch (and because the real world was fairly dangerous). But we first see Wade outside of his “home,” and it’s pretty lively. People are shown outside a lot during the movie, and it just felt wrong.
  • The book was heavy in 80s pop culture references. The movie expanded that to just general pop culture, but even that was very light (I get that a lot of this might have been copyright issues, but it’s still worth mentioning).
  • In the book, Wade started out overweight (spent most of his life in a virtual environment, after all), but had a physical transformation once he gained the means to be active while also in the OASIS. There was no change of this sort in the movie.
  • Also, in the book, Wade started out completely destitute. The things he had to do to make any progress in the OASIS showed ingenuity and a real struggle. This was barely touched on in the movie.
  • Because The Hunt had gone on for years already when the book started, everyone who was hunting (called gunters) knew pretty much everything there was to know about Halliday, his life, and every book, movie, video game, song, or TV show that he liked. In the movie, Wade was explaining how he’d figured out a clue to other gunters often, and it really bothered me that he knew so much more than the others.
  • Though I said in my original review that the time that Wade was alone (pushed away his friends) was not a time I enjoyed, I realized watching the movie that I missed it when it didn’t happen. Most likely, that means I didn’t enjoy it because it was depressing (which it was meant to be), not that it was a bad story element.
  • I loved Ogden Morrow’s role in the book. In the movie it was kinda…meh (and it seemed like a waste of Simon Pegg).
  • It really bugged me that they called the IOI gunters Sixers, but had absolutely no explanation as to why. It wouldn’t have been difficult to explain it. Even not coming from a book, it was an unnecessary lack of explanation.
  • Similarly, in the book, the first 5 gunters to find the first key were known as the “High Five,” because of their positions on the almighty leader board. When watching the movie, I’d completely forgotten about that until some time in the last 20-30 minutes when Wade uses that term to reference those 5 characters, and I actually sat up and said, “Wait, what?! How are we supposed to know what he means by that, when this is the first time anyone’s said it?”

Before I go into the spoilers, I want to mention a few things about the movie that I liked:

  • The visual effects in the OASIS were great. Much better than I could imagine in my head, I’m sure. I also enjoyed the way it looked when characters accessed things from their inventory and such. I’ve had dreams about actually being inside a game world, i.e. being my character, and it reminded me a bit of that. (Is that weird?)
  • There were some nods to some of the things in the book that weren’t used in the movie at all, which was nice. Seeing the planet Ludus early in the movie, for example, made me smile.

Below here are the rest of my notes, which have what I would consider spoilers. Read on at your own discretion.

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Book Review: The Curious Conspiracy on Gamma Ceti

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The Curious Conspiracy on Gamma Ceti
 by Nemo West

My rating: 2.5 / 5
Genre: YA sci-fi

51833148._SX318_SY475_

Gamma Ceti is a planet in another galaxy, with a remote colony of vaguely religious people living in a vaguely 20th century world. Dex is an outcast in his class, which essentially means he’ll be an outcast for life, because of the closed-off and tight-knit nature of this community. When a new girl arrives from Earth, he’s infatuated by her, but too timid to approach her. However, it’s not long before an encounter with a bully forces Dex onto Tabitha’s radar, and then life really changes for Dex. He and Tab spent a lot of time alone together, which she eventually admits started as an attempt on her part to try to uncover some strange happenings in the school. What neither of them ever expected was to encounter a massive conspiracy involving brainwashing, a conspiracy that those involved would kill to keep secret.

When I first decided to read this book, I expected a fun YA adventure with a mystery to unravel. There were some interesting elements to the mystery as it unfolded, and I appreciated the way that the main character had some real drawbacks, even as he started to evolve through the story. Even Tab broke some stereotypes I expected from her character.

Unfortunately, I was distracted by a few issues. One was the amount that the two main characters had frivolous conversations in the middle of dire circumstances. I’m not saying that the conversations themselves were unimportant to the characters, especially in high school. However, running away from bad guys, or trying to escape a secret lair, are not the best times to have arguments about relationships. Maybe this was a result of the author wanting to keep the action going, while also trying to resolve the relationship, but to me, it just made absolutely no sense. At one point, the characters even stopped moving toward their escape to have one of these discussions!

Another thing that bothered me about the book was the writing. Maybe it’s only because I read the entire thing over the course of a day, but I noticed such a repetition in character actions and dialog tags that it grew distracting by the end of the book.

I also have to mention the cringe-worthy items for me. First, there was the f-bomb right off the bat that made me realize the book would be just as language-heavy as the adult books I’ve been reading lately. Then there was the rather graphic sex scene with two teenagers that was very unwelcome and uncomfortable for me. That blind-sided me in particular, considering the YA/Teen shelving and the cartoonish cover art (though I didn’t notice the blood on Dex’s sock until after I’d read the book). I would not want my teens reading this book.

By about halfway through the book, the characters had hinted at what was going on, and it never really deviated from that. I expected some sort of twist, or final reveal, but outside of a few small unexpected things, it followed through to the end much like I expected. And there was no real resolution, not even a firm answer about whether what the characters hinted at is what was even going on. It looks to be the beginning of a series, but I don’t know which thread the continuation will follow, so for now, I just feel let down. In some ways, this is what you want from a book in a series, and to be honest, it did its job. I will look for the next book in this series and give it another chance, going into it this time with an understanding of what I’m in for. That’s the main reason I am giving this book 2.5 stars, when originally I planned to give it 2.

Final thoughts: The book is a strange mixture of being too mature for teen/YA (in my personal opinion), but too juvenile for anything above that. I honestly couldn’t recommend this book for teenagers, but for people who enjoy sci-fi that is less complex and tech-heavy, it could be worth a read.

Thank you to Netgalley for providing me an ARC of this book.
Publication date: Aug 20, 2019

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If you’ve read this book, or read it in the future, feel free to let me know what you think!

Book Review: Wonderblood (DNF)

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Did Not Finish: Wonderblood
by Julia Whicker

My rating: DNF, no rating
Genre: Post-apocalyptic, dystopian

Wonderblood

I read 1 chapter of Wonderblood and had to put it down. In my defense, it was quite a long chapter, so I gave it a decent chance. But in the end, it proved to be too dark, gritty, and disturbing for my taste. I’m sure that’s understandable for a post-apocalyptic, dystopian setting, but I couldn’t handle it. My main issues were the over-abundance of decapitated heads, excessive blood-shedding (“Wonderblood” refers to a belief that the world will be saved when the earth has been given enough human blood) and pedophilia/incest, and this was just in the 1st chapter.  I skimmed ahead to get an idea of whether or not all of this calmed down, and it may have to a degree, but what I saw when skimming didn’t interest me.

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If you’ve read this book, or read it in the future, feel free to let me know what you think!

Book Review: The Trials of Lance Eliot

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The Trials of Lance Eliot
 by Adam Stück (as M.L. Brown)

Genre: Fantasy

Trials of LE

I am not going to give much of a review of this book, because the author has stated that he plans to rewrite it, whether he eventually publishes that new version or not (he stated this over 4 years ago, so who knows what progress he may or may not have made on it by now).

I knew about this book because the author is my sister’s brother-in-law. I followed his blog for part of the time it existed, from 2011 through 2016. The book was published in 2012. It is a fantasy tale of a college student who is accidentally summoned to another world in the hopes that he can help those who summoned him stave off war (they were attempting to summon Lancelot and got Lance Eliot). This regular, flawed man goes through a lot of hardship in his journey to return home, and that’s only 1/3 of his story. (The rest of the trilogy wasn’t written at the time that the author decided to re-write the first book.)

After finishing the book, I searched Adam’s blog for posts related to the book and found out that pretty much all of the downsides I saw in the book he had already identified and planned to change in his re-write (as well as other changes that he has planned). It is mostly for this reason that I do not intend to list any of these things, and instead will just link to his own post on the matter (MAJOR SPOILER ALERT). (I actually read this post when he first wrote it and made some comments, even though I hadn’t read the book at the time. I didn’t recall this at all until I saw my comment there today.)

Though the author intends to rewrite the book, you still may find the first version of interest, especially if you enjoy J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Dante’s Inferno, or mythology. (Don’t read the post about what he intends to change before reading it though. There are spoilers!)

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If you’ve read this book, or read it in the future, feel free to let me know what you think!

Book Review: Ready Player One

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Ready Player One
 by Ernest Cline

My rating: 3.5 / 5
Genre: Science Fiction

RP1.png

Over 100 years in the future, mankind has been largely driven inside the virtual world. They work in the OASIS, go to school, hang out with friends, rely on it for entertainment, and even treasure hunt in the OASIS. The main storyline in the book is a treasure hunt that was created by the man who created the OASIS. The person who finds the Easter egg hidden in the virtual environment, by following all of the clues, will basically be the wealthiest person alive.

Ready Player One is my husband’s favorite book. He’s tried to get me to read the book or watch the movie here and there, but I told him that I didn’t think I’d enjoy it as much as him, because the 80s references would largely be lost on me. I was a teenager in the 90s, and a fairly sheltered one at that. I don’t even know much about pop culture in the 90s and know way, way less about pop culture in the 80s. But now that I’ve started to get back to my bookworm roots, I knew it was time to give this book a read.

Keep in mind when reading the rest of this post that I was correct about the heavy 80s references not providing much nostalgia for me. However, I don’t think that’s the only reason that the plethora of references fell flat for me. I came to a point pretty early on when I realized how shallow most of the references are. Movies, games, books, TV shows, comics, music—all of these things are briefly named, often in lists, but that’s about it. So I guess the people who get the references get to go, “Oh! That show!” and move on. Not much substance.

On the flip side, however, the times when the 80s pop culture was part of the challenges in The Hunt, even though I didn’t get the hit of nostalgia during those sections that others would get, I really enjoyed them! So not diving into spoilers too much, the Easter egg hunt involves finding 3 keys, which each open a gate. So the hunters have to find the keys, find the gates, and “clear” the gates, all of which involved solving some sort of challenge, even if just a riddle. Those were my favorite parts of the book. Unfortunately, in between these sections, the book mostly dragged for me, especially when the main character, Wade, pushes his friends away and is alone for a while.

Another thing I enjoyed about the book was the way the author described things inside the Oasis. I actually thought it would seem silly or weird to read about the mechanics in this virtual world, but Cline did a good job of explaining it. I’ve played a decent amount of games that allowed me to imagine how the interface worked, so that might have helped.

As the book ramped up to the end, I kept expecting a huge twist. A certain specific trope that I won’t mention so I don’t spoil that it doesn’t happen was especially on my mind, but it doesn’t happen. Not that there wasn’t any kind of twist near the end, but not what I was expecting, and not as big as I was expecting. I weirdly found the end of the book and the challenges the characters had to go through too easy and very difficult at the same time. It’s hard to explain without giving anything away though.

My husband tells me that the movie is different from the book, but good in its own right. He also says it focuses more on The Hunt (the parts I liked the most). I’m looking forward to watching it!

Find out more about Ready Player One

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If you’ve read this book, or read it in the future, feel free to let me know what you think!

July in Review

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At the beginning of this month, I decided to devote more time to reading. Of course, in my case, based on how much I’ve read over the last 10 years, more time meant…any time. Over the course of the month, I read 6 books, which surprised me. But even more importantly (and more excitingly), I quickly rediscovered how much I loved reading. Two days ago, my husband saw where the bookmark was in my 6th book for the month and said, “You really are getting back into reading, aren’t you?” My response: “Yes! This is what I used to do, and I’m loving it!”

So while in my first post announcing this new feature (and hobby re-kindling), I suggested that posting about what books I’m reading would be a way to hold myself accountable, I know that’s not necessary. Now I’m just posting what I’ve read to share it with others and make my recommendations. But while I planned for this feature to be weekly, and thought it might even sometimes have to be filled in with something besides a review of what I recently read because I wouldn’t read fast enough, my reading pace has made me realize I’m quickly going to get behind in posting reviews. I’ll just have to post extra now and then to stay caught up.

Here are the books I read in July, only half of which have been posted about:

WaCR
7.5 Deaths
The Oath
RP1
The Novice
Trials of LE

Weave a Circle Round by Kari Maaren
The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
The Oath by Frank Peretti
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (review pending)
The Novice by Taran Matharu (review pending)
The Trials of Lance Eliot by M.L. Brown, a.k.a. Adam Stück (review pending)

The rest of these posts will go up in the next few weeks. My ever-changing list of to-be-reads, as well as a flag for the book I’m currently reading and an ongoing list of those I’ve read and posted about can be found here.

I’m also keeping my Goodreads page updated with a more extensive list of to-be-reads, if anyone is interested in that. (Note: The list of books I have read overall is not remotely complete there. When I created my Goodreads page 4 years ago, I added some of my favorite books over the years, but to add everything I’ve ever read would be very time-consuming, not to mention impossible to remember it all.)

Despite my almost too-long list of TBRs, I’m always looking for more to add. Feel free to offer suggestions of your favorites or just recent reads you enjoyed.

Book Review: The Oath

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The Oath
 by Frank Peretti

My rating: 5 / 5
Genre: Christian Thriller

The Oath

People are disappearing, possibly dying, in or around a small mining town in the Pacific northwest, and the the people in town seem to know what’s going on, but are unwilling or unable to talk about it. When an outsider dies, it opens up their small-town secrets to the rest of the world. The brother of the outsider who died starts to dig and uncovers a creature that he is determined to bring to light, but the town’s occupants won’t let go of their dragon without a fight.

The Oath has been my favorite book pretty much since I first read it, at least 20 years ago. Up until maybe 10 years ago, I re-read it just about every year. It used to scare me when I read it at night, despite how well I knew the story. Now that I’m getting back to reading regularly, I realized how much I wanted to read it again, and part of that was curiosity about whether or not its status as my favorite book would hold up. I’m happy to say it did!

I fully admit that the book could have been shorter, as there is a decent amount of description of old mining operations and mountain views that I generally skim, but overall, the book is a great example of a Christian thriller. It is also an allegory, which I think is important to realize while reading it.

Once again, by the time I was in the 2nd half of this book, I found myself caught up in the hunt and the excitement of what was happening. I did not have any issues reading at night though, so apparently I’ve either gotten used to it enough, or I’ve grown out of that problem. But I thoroughly enjoyed it, and in a way felt like I was coming home as I read this classic favorite.

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Book Review: The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

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The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle
 by Stuart Turton

My rating: 3.5 / 5
Genre: Mystery Thriller

(Recommended by amusing2write)
7.5 Deaths

Imagine coming to consciousness in the middle of a dark forest, mid-sentence, with no memories of who you are, where you are, or why you’re in the middle of a dark forest yelling someone’s name. That is how this book begins, and it only gets more interesting from there. The main character & narrator eventually finds out that he is going to relive the same day 8 times, and that each time, someone will die (the same someone). Only if he can solve the murder will he be released from doing all of this over again, wiped of memories at the start of doing it again.

I had my ups and downs with this book, but in the end, the ups did outweigh the downs. I’ll start with what I enjoyed.

The murder-mystery itself was intricate and well-planned. It kept me guessing throughout the book, especially in the later half, when answers were finally starting to come, yet kept being not what they appeared to be. No one is ever quite who they seem to be, even the people that you are certain couldn’t possibly be hiding something. And I really appreciated the way that the narrator’s different hosts contributed their own abilities toward solving the murder.

As the same day is being relived by the narrator, it reads a lot like a time travel story, as the narrator sees the same events happen over and over. The author did a good job with the continuity in this respect. There were a few things that confused me in this area, but they were intentional (not intentionally confusing, but intentional as in not a continuity issue). I can’t say more without giving some spoilers.

I was certain throughout the book that there would never be an explanation given for the greater mystery–who or what was behind the narrator being trapped inside the various guests at Blackheath, forced to solve a murder. A combination of some reviews that I read and my own assumption that this wouldn’t be explained, due to the why not being the focus of the story, led me to this certainty. I was pleasantly surprised to find that an explanation was given, and while I was still left with some questions when the book ended, a Q&A section at the back of the book clarified things. To be clear though–this wasn’t a cheat on the author’s part to leave out some information and fill in the blanks later. It didn’t bother me to be left with the questions I had–it was the kind of thing where the reader was left to infer their own answers, and it turned out I had inferred them correctly.

Here were the downsides to the book for me (as spoiler-free as I can be), which can be mostly chalked up to personal preference:

Early on, I struggled with how long it took to get into the mystery, and what was happening that seemed to be completely unrelated, or at least very different, from what the book was going to be about. Between the title of the book and the inside of the book jacket, I knew a lot more than I feel like I was meant to know, and grew impatient waiting for that information to be presented in the book. Even the name of the narrator is right there on the book jacket, but that information wasn’t given until at least 1/4 of the way into the book. I don’t think this is the fault of the book itself though, so much as the fault of the blurb and, to a lesser degree, the title.

The book is written in 1st person and present tense. It works well for the premise, but the downside to this is that certain events are a little too up-close and personal for my taste. This mainly relates to violence and death, but other situations as well. By the end of the book, I felt like I should take a shower, as the mustiness and decay of Blackheath and the alcohol- and smoke-covered guests is described so often, and in such intimate detail that at times it felt like I was swimming in it. I also didn’t care for the extreme way that the author portrayed one of the narrator’s guest’s overweight body, with such disdain, and not to mention as if the host could barely walk 10 feet without being out of breath. I was as thankful to be out of that host as the narrator was.

The last downside I want to mention is that I didn’t personally care for the author’s style. There was so much figurative language that, by the end of the book, I actually said to my husband, “I’ve read this sentence 5 times, but I can’t tell if something big just happened, or if it’s just a metaphor.” There is also quite a bit of description, so between that and the figurative language, the narration often bogged down the story for me. I came to appreciate the dialog, because it was much more straight-forward, but a lot of the story happens in the narration. By the last third of the book, though, I had started to skim the descriptions (how many different ways can you tell me that a new room we’ve entered is dirty, run-down, and dark?), hoping I wouldn’t miss anything important along the way.

To sum up, I did enjoy the book, and once I really got into the mystery, I found myself wanting to come back to it whenever I could. I would recommend it for people who enjoy mystery, especially those with intricate plots. I think many would struggle with the complexity of it though. I would not recommend it to my friends and family, however, as I think the violence and debauchery might bother them as much as, if not more than, it did me, so keep that in mind if you don’t care for that sort of thing.

Find out more about The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle*
*This is the US title. The book is elsewhere titled The 7 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle.

If you’ve read this book, or read it in the future, feel free to let me know what you think!

Book Review: Weave a Circle Round

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Weave a Circle Round
 by Kari Maaren

My rating: 3.5 / 5
Genre: YA Fantasy

WaCR

Freddy doesn’t have the most pleasant life–she doesn’t get along with her siblings very well, her parents are basically non-existent, and her friendships are fragile at best. When Cuerva Lachance and Josiah move in next door, and Josiah starts going to her school, I’d imagine she longs for the simpler days when those relationships were her only problems. The new neighbors just don’t seem to obey the laws of physics, and worse yet, they end up sucking Freddy into their bizarre lives, which just happen to involve time travel.

I enjoyed most of this book. Though I didn’t connect with the main character or her family in the first section of the book, the mystery presented in the second section had me coming back to it every chance I got. I also enjoyed the way the author looped the time traveling, especially when it related to “present time.” My sense of foreboding grew along with the main character, as the time travel played itself out. However, the ending of the book didn’t deliver quite the punch I was expecting. I didn’t follow some of it, and for the rest of it, I was a little out of my element regarding the fantasy elements. There was one moment that I really liked, that called back to the very beginning, but I can’t say more than that. I appreciate Kari’s mind toward continuity within a story.

Overall, I’d say this book is worth a read, especially if you enjoy fantasy, fairy tales, and mythology.

I also want to again mention Kari’s web comics, West of Bathurst and It Never Rains. The former has some fantasy/fairy tale elements, and the latter is more sci-fi. Both have long-running plots (as opposed to a gag-a-day type format).

Find out more about Kari Maaren and Weave a Circle Round

If you’ve read this book, or read it in the future, feel free to let me know what you think!

Book Preview: Weave a Circle Round (currently reading)

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Following my shameful admission earlier this week, I’ll add this one: a friend of mine published a book a year and a half ago, and I’ve owned it for much of that time, but I hadn’t even read the first page until this week.

I am very quickly remedying this, though, as I have already finished over half of Kari Maaren’s Weave a Circle Round since I started into it on Monday. It is a fantasy novel in the YA range. I have been enjoying it so far, but that’s all I’ll say in that regard until I finish it.

I will at least say that I strongly identify with the main character, 14-year-old Freddy Duchamp, at least when it comes to her introverted tendencies. One particular line in the 1st chapter jumped out at me, explaining my own desire to avoid confrontation in a way I had never consciously thought of it: “Confronting people was just another way of drawing attention to yourself, which wasn’t the best thing to do when you weren’t even sure you were right about anything.” This is me to a T.

I will have more to say on this book next week, as I expect to have finished reading it by then, but for now, let me point you in the direction of Kari’s other works of fiction. I have been a reader of her web comics for 5 years now, reading West of Bathurst from the start right after it ended. I enjoyed it immensely, despite being a bit lost about things specifically related to the setting. Then she began a new web comic, which is still going on now, called It Never Rains. I recommend both of them, especially if you’re a fan of fantasy or sci-fi. (Also, I’m sort of in It Never Rains, which I forgot about until right now.)

Find out more about Kari Maaren and Weave a Circle Round