I feel as though I am going to be giving all of Mistborn era 2 the same rating: 4 stars. Shadows of Self and the rest of era 2 is increRating: 4 stars
I feel as though I am going to be giving all of Mistborn era 2 the same rating: 4 stars. Shadows of Self and the rest of era 2 is incredible, no doubt about it, but Mistborn era 1 is just something special, that I feel can't be topped.
One thing I do appreciate about Mistborn era 2 is the scale of the story. All too often in fantasy the plot centers around giant, world ending, catastrophes that must be stopped in order to save civilization as a whole. In Mistborn era 2, you still get the sense that if Wax and Wayne fail, bad things will happen, but the stakes are significantly lower. Should they slip up, there is no consequence that effectively ends their lives and those of the people around them. Brandon Sanderson really brought everything down a notch when writing Mistborn era 2, a drastic shift from the armageddon vibe the original series has....more
Man, that beginning was so great. It had everything I wanted from The Name of the Wind - an old, washed-up hero telling his story, but Rating: 3 stars
Man, that beginning was so great. It had everything I wanted from The Name of the Wind - an old, washed-up hero telling his story, but in a sci fi setting and overall just... better. I was invested in the world, the power dynamics and (kind of) the characters. But then we did the same thing. Again. And again. And I got bored. It got so repetitive, that even though I quite enjoyed the first few repeats, I learned you really can have too much of a good thing, because it really grated on me the third and fourth time we ended up doing the same thing again.
I knew these books existed before they seemed to blow up online in the past year because they have been stocked at my tiny library for years now (who knew, but it was actually ahead of the trends for once), so I had pretty high expectations going in, and while the beginning was very promising, the rest was a real let down....more
My decision to read this book was almost 100% due to Michael Kramer and Kate Reading's narration. I was uploading the e- and audiobooksRating: 3 stars
My decision to read this book was almost 100% due to Michael Kramer and Kate Reading's narration. I was uploading the e- and audiobooks to my laptop in order to transfer them to my phone so I could read them (does anyone actually read on their laptop/computer) and when the audiobook finished uploading, it just started to play. I'm not exaggerating when I say I heard Michael Kramer coming out of the speakers and thought, "whelp, I can't stop him now. I guess I'm reading this book." I mean, who am I to switch off Michael Kramer?
Dragonsteel Prime had some good ideas character-wise and thematically, but Sanderson just did not have the skill to execute them in a way that draws readers in, like he does now. I read another one of the "Sanderson Curiosities" a few years ago, The Way of Kings Prime, and most of the criticisms I brought up in my review for that book translate to this one. The characters have none of the complexities that Sanderson is known for, and because of that, if this book had been traditionally published before his other works, I don't think we would have latched on to the characters like we now do.
The same goes for his early plot work. The beginnings of great stories are there in both Dragonsteel Prime and The Way of Kings Prime, but they are really just parts of the design process that lead to us getting the cannon The Way of Kings. In that way, I feel like I read the development of The Stormlight Archive backwards, going from the regular published The Way of Kings, to the prime version, to even earlier in the story's evolution with Dragonsteel Prime. Reading in the opposite direction to the author writing is an interesting experience. There are sections from Dragonsteel Prime that are obviously ripped out and refined before being included in later works, (the idea of the Shattered Plains is just too good a concept for the way it was utilised here) but there are other, more subtle ways this book has helped Sanderson become the author he is today. Some of those ways are probably only known to him.
The best part of Dragonsteel Prime was Hoid/Wit, or Topaz/Cephandrius, as he is called in this book. Reading those sections truly felt like I was reading modern Sanderson writing. Even if the characterisation of the rest of the cast was a bit bland, (Jerick in particular) the charm and, well, wit of Hoid/Topaz/Cephandrius (crikey man, pick a name) was timeless and evidently was something that came naturally to Sanderson early in his career.
Surprisingly for a Sanderson, the ending was the weakest part. The "twist" was obvious from a mile away, and there was no satisfying outer conflict resolution to make up for the severe lack of nuanced inner turmoil. What I am trying to say in so many words, is that the emotional beats Sanderson is known for were certainly no where near as strong as they are now, and there was no Sanderlanche in sight. I know at the time, Sanderson intended for this book to be the start of the series that would become his magnum opus, as he says in the introduction:
"In 1999, [...] it was time to do my “big” fantasy. The book that would launch my big series. My Wheel of Time, Lord of the Rings, or Dragonriders of Pern. The work I was confident some day, everyone would know me for. That never happened."
He goes on to explain how the book never seemed to "click together" for him and he ended up largely abandoning it. Instead he more or less scrapped Dragonsteel for parts, taking out chunks of ideas that he fixed and adapted to fit other works that did succeed in getting published.
And in a similar vein to this book, the ending of this review will be lacklustre and abrupt, because everything I want to say I have said, and I have no concluding thoughts....more
You know, there was a time when knowing the name of the father of the atomic bomb would get me some rather impressed looks during my haRating: 4 stars
You know, there was a time when knowing the name of the father of the atomic bomb would get me some rather impressed looks during my habitual "did you know?" section of every conversation. Damn you, Christopher Nolan. You took away my fact and made it into common knowledge. I hate it when they do that. Now I have to go find some other obscure piece of information to wow people at parties. ...more
Connie Willis has two types of story telling: The first is a bleak, depressing, and unflinching look at a (usually historical) situatRating: 3.5 stars
Connie Willis has two types of story telling: The first is a bleak, depressing, and unflinching look at a (usually historical) situation where all hell breaks loose and everything just hits the fan. The second involves characters with so much unused space between their ears that if they were ever in need of extra storage space they wouldn't even need to bother looking elsewhere. ALL of these stories fall in to the second category.
(Ok, I need to zoom through these mini reviews, because I don't want to be posting it after the Christmas/New Year season is over. So expect these to be pretty brief. And yes, I did extend that time frame because I couldn't get this done by Christmas. Don't judge my procrastination.)
Miracle: Awards and nominations: Hugo and Locus nominee Willis has a couple of Dickens' A Christmas Carol-inspired stories in this collection, and Miracle is one of them. It basically follows this woman who like Scrooge is visited by a spirit, but in this case the spirit is more... alternative. He causes a real Christmas tree to grow out of her kitchen floor. He changes her quote "perfect" holiday dress to one that is more "eco friendly". He switches all her copies of Miracle on 34th Street to It's A Wonderful Life (the latter of which is obviously vastly inferior). He just wreaks havoc in a season that is already ultra stressful. It is quite amusing. Overall, the story feels a little like Willis' other book Crosstalk in the office banter/character relations, and ultimately in the romantic resolution.
All About Emily: I might be remembering this one strangely, but I don't think it was that Christmas-y. It's about a broadway actress who meets an android called Emily who claims to be her number one fan. Later, Emily comes back to the actress for advice because she has decided to become a robot Rockette. She tries various methods in order to make it into the group, including modifying her physical appearance to be more Rockette-like, but she inevitably faces a lot of roadblocks because she is not organic. But I don't know where the Christmas fits in. I think there was some snow or something...? Eh, whatever.
Inn: This one is pretty simple: Mary and Joseph get stuck in the present. Oops. Plus unborn Jesus. Double oops. So this lady has to find out a way to get them back to Bethlehem so, you know, Christmas can happen. And that's about it. Told you it was simple.
All Seated on the Ground: Awards and nominations: Hugo winner; Locus nominee I have already read this story in another Connie Willis short story collection, Time is the Fire. My review for All Seated on the Ground can be found as a part of my larger review for that collection here.
In Coppelius's Toyshop: This is so strange. Yes, this story is strange, but the fact that I read this now is more what I am referring to. If you weren't already aware (which you should be), November of this year marks 60 years since episode one of Doctor Who was first broadcast. To celebrate, they brought David Tennant and Catherine Tate back to reprise their roles as the Doctor and Donna Noble respectively in three anniversary specials, the third being titled "The Giggle". Basically, it involves this creepy Toymaker dude who traps the Doctor and Donna in this nonsensical maze thing in his toyshop. The episode does move past this, but that alone is the premise of this story. I truly don't need to say anything else.
Adaptation: Awards and nominations: Locus nominee This is the other story based on A Christmas Carol. A guy gets visited by ghosts, as per usual, but in this case the subject is not the grumpy person in the story. His ex-wife is, and she is truly an absolute douche. So it's not really about the "Scrooge" changing their ways and becoming more kind. The story uses the traditional Dickens ghosts more as a backdrop to showcasing the difficulties divorced parents go through in the holiday season. How they are forced to celebrate Christmas in different (and ultimately societally divergent) ways. It is probably the most serious story in the collection, but for good reason, as it treats the subject matter with the respect it deserves.
deck.halls@boughs/holly: So to follow up the most serious story in this collection, we have perhaps the most absurd, or at least the most overtly American. This lady runs a business where she makes themed Christmas parties. And they are rarely actually Christmas themed Christmas parties. They are Lord of the Rings-themed, ghetto-themed, Rocky-themed, Indiana Jones-themed, modern art-themed, Downtown Abbey-themed, tropical-themed, ancient Roman specifically-during-the-rule-of-Emperor-Vitellius-themed... and while I am running out of ideas, this girl never seems to. So the story is just about her running this over the top, quintessentially American company during the Christmas season. While it sounds rather stupid on paper, what makes the story work is how much Willis absolutely leans in to the incredible tackiness of this concept. It's silly, it's goofy, and it knows it.
Cat's Paw: This one is a strange one. It's a classic murder mystery (think Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie vibes) but the prime suspects are talking monkeys. Yes, as in "hoo hoo hah ooh ha" monkeys. This dude is the Holmes/Poirot of this world and he ends up in this rich person's house where they train monkeys to talk and just overall increase their intelligence. A guy dies at this manor, and an investigation takes place where everyone blames the smart monkeys, and the detective dude has to figure out whodunnit and basically exonerate the monkeys. It also happens to be Christmas time, so it operates on the same principle that makes Die Hard inarguably a Christmas movie.
Now Showing: This one takes place at a near-future movie cinema where the entire movie industry's main objective is to stop you seeing the movie at all costs. Why? Because the movie itself doesn't actually exist and all they have really made is the trailer. Again, why? Because it is cheaper to make a trailer than a whole movie, and the latter of which has the potential to loose the studio a ton of money. (Plus, we all know you're probably just going to wait for it to show up on streaming or something.) So to make money with these non-existent movies, they just make spin offs and sequel galore, and bank on you having seen the previous movie, rather than making this one any good (sound familiar). Then they "show" the movie at the cinema, but all they really want you to do it buy the over priced food, so they try and trap you inside for as long as possible, kind of like an Ikea. But this girl's (slightly crazy) ex has figured it out and will expose everyone!... if he can actually make it out of the theatre to begin with. And that is the story. Just a whole bunch of movie references and conspiracy accusations. Truly, a masterpiece of chaotic literature.
Newsletter: Awards and nominations: Locus winner This one is kind of weird. There is an alien invasion, and the aliens are occupying human's bodies. And the aliens are hiding under people's hats. The aliens are also not doing the typical parasite thing: they might actually be helping the hosts make better life choices.
Epiphany: This one is technically not a Christmas story, as it takes place in January, but it involves Jesus so I guess it kind of counts. Epiphany is about this church pastor who has an (you guessed it) epiphany about the Second Coming. It is, well, coming. Basically, the Book of Revelation is happening in real time. So this pastor goes to find Jesus with his atheist friend, and hijinks ensue. For a story with that kind of premise, you would expect that at least one character would be portrayed in an insulting light; someone's gotta come away offended when you mix these kind of elements in a pot. Surprisingly though, I actually found Willis to be quite respectful of all the angles present in the story.
Just Like the Ones We Used to Know: Awards and nominations: Hugo, Locus and Nebula nominee This one is about a Christmas one year where it snows over the entire United States. So basically the whole world. It's kind of like a possible future, where humanity lets climate change go crazy and it causes a huge snow storm everywhere. This story was ultimately completely unrelatable to me, as in the southern hemisphere, the closest we have come to a white Christmas was probably this Christmas, where we had rain - and very humid rain at that.
Then Willis ends the collection (and how I am ending this review) by recommending Christmas movies and songs and books etc. Yes, I read them all, but I'm not really a Christmas media kind of person, so I wasn't really paying much attention. But then, the second to last thing Connie Willis recommended was all the Doctor Who Christmas specials! I had to make a note of this:
"Doctor Who, the Christmas specials - All the Doctor Who Christmas specials, "The Husbands of River Song", "Last Christmas", "The Time of the Doctor", "The Snowmen", "The End of Time", "The Day of the Doctor", are terrific. My favourite is probably "Tooth and Claw"*, having as it does Queen Victoria, a werewolf, Scotland, the birth of Torchwood, and the Koh-i-Noor diamond. But don't make me choose; you should watch them all."
What a great note to end both the story collection and this review on. anD I MADE IT! I got there before New Year's Day! Wooooooo I beat my procrastination... kind of
*Ok. Fine. I have to mention it. My stupid Whovian brain won't shut up without mentioning that "Tooth and Claw" is not actually a Christmas special, and to my knowledge doesn't include any reference to the holiday at all. It is a great episode, nonetheless... bar the shoddy early 21st century CGI....more
I was going to write a long review of Babel, but then I read Petrik's review, and once again I am floored by his ability to convey his Rating: 4 stars
I was going to write a long review of Babel, but then I read Petrik's review, and once again I am floored by his ability to convey his thoughts and feelings on a book in his third freaking language better than I can do in my first (and only). Maybe I just need to make a rule to read Petrik's stuff after I have finished writing my own, because that is the second time in the past few months that this has happened.
Whether you pronounce it BABEl or BABel (or, if you're like me, BOOBle, because you are actually five years old) there is no denying that R.F. Kuang has released another excellent book. She has proven once again that she was no "one hit wonder" with The Poppy War trilogy; nor is she confined to one genre, conquering dark academia with Babel, and general fiction with Yellowface.
Reading Babel as an English speaker will probably make you feel very stupid. Not in a belittling way, just in the way that there is a whole other world of learning that you can undertake as a multilingual person that those of us confined to learning in one language can't even touch. In short, I am jealous. I have tried to learn other languages (French, Japanese, Te Reo Māori) but all I've come away with are a few words here and there; nothing properly sticks. I can probably greet and farewell you in Te Reo, but that is only because it is literally the native language of my country (I mean, I live in Tauranga for goodness sake) but any and everything else seemed to go in one ear and out the other.
That leads me onto the other big theme discussed in Babel: colonisation. I, as previously eluded to, live in New Zealand, which is actually the name the English gave to Aotearoa. It's no secret it's a colonised country. As someone who is descended from the settlers (not the initial ones, but a bit later), I cannot change what happened in the past, but I can try to make today a little better. Wow, that sounded really Ted Talk-y. All I'm trying to say is that I find myself thinking about colonisation probably too much already, and Babel has caused me to ponder it even more... even if the ending was a little too heavy handed with said messages.
Ok, need to wrap this up because I'm going to start rambling about random stuff soon. Babel was really good and R.F. Kuang is awesome. The end.
P.S. Also, R.F. Kuang's team need extra awards because she has still yet to have an ugly cover. The Poppy War trilogy, Yellowface, and especially Babel... they're all absolute bangers....more
I'm bored. I am not enjoying this book. I can't be bothered finishing it. Maybe it is simply not for me. There was nDNF at page 117 (17.01%)
Rating: NA
I'm bored. I am not enjoying this book. I can't be bothered finishing it. Maybe it is simply not for me. There was nothing egregiously wrong with it, I just lost interest. ...more
Why is everyone raving about this book? It takes half the book trying to figure out what kind of sci-fi it's gonna be, and then it whenRating: 2 stars
Why is everyone raving about this book? It takes half the book trying to figure out what kind of sci-fi it's gonna be, and then it when it does, it's over so quickly that there was no point at all. I even forgot that the reason I picked it up was because of the time travel aspect, because it took so long to get to it. This thing is 320 pages, but it felt more like 120 for all that happens. The writing was fine, I guess, but I am finding that I don't really notice prose until it is super duper purple and over the top. All this is to say that I truly don't get what people see in this book. I must have missed the boat entirely, because all I read was a mediocre science fiction story that I am almost guaranteed to forget about in a months time....more
This book is strange. Very strange. And gross, too. Very, very gross. Yes, there was probably great commentary on something, but I wasRating: ?? stars
This book is strange. Very strange. And gross, too. Very, very gross. Yes, there was probably great commentary on something, but I was too distracted by all the strangeness and grossness to pay any attention.
Basically, Bloodchild is set in this community where humans live alongside these giant bug aliens (I kept picturing them looking like the Empress of the Racnoss, that big red spider-like lady from the first Doctor Who episode with Donna). These aliens take a page out of Ridley Scott's book and do a human egg implantation, à la Xenomorph from Alien. But there's several John Hurts. And the hosts know the day is coming so have to spend their life waiting to become a walking egg sac. As I said, it's strange.
We follow Gan, this young boy who was personally selected to be a John Hurt (lucky him) by his family's resident bug alien. To prepare his body this alien keeps feeding him her raw unfertilised eggs to strengthen and prepare his body to take on her young (I mean, this guy really hit the jackpot). As I said, it's gross. Then, one day, Gan has to urgently participate in the delivery of alien babies from another host. This involves watching his alien "friend" slicing the poor screaming man open from sternum to anus to extract the parasitic larvae quickly, before placing them in a large animal Gan shot earlier to stop them from eating the human host (who is alive, just barely) instead. As I said, it's very, very gross.
I have no idea how to rate weird books. Yes, there is usually a reason for all the weirdness, but I often can't look past all the odd stuff to see what that reason is. I didn't dislike Bloodchild as much as, say, Stranger in a Strange Land, but I think that is because the latter is exactly 21x the length of Octavia E. Butler's novelette, so the strangeness is constant and unrelenting. Bloodchild has the weirdness of classic sci fi but in bite-size form. You can read it, cringe at it, but then it ends and you don't have to put up with hundreds of pages of discomfort (looking at you, Heinlein)....more
Oh, that was hilarious. Who knew Data could be so funny. Why did it take me so long to get to it? Or, more accurately, why did it taRating: 3.75 stars
Oh, that was hilarious. Who knew Data could be so funny. Why did it take me so long to get to it? Or, more accurately, why did it take me so long to realise it existed?! It was right in my face, being written by Brent Spiner himself AND being nominated for the 2021 Goodreads Choice Awards which I voted in. How on earth did this slip under my radar?!
Fan Fiction: A Mem-Noir: Inspired by True Events is so compulsively readable, I was going to take notes, but I just could not turn away from this book! I even had something pretty big on the day I started reading, and was planning to finish it the next day, so I put it down... and picked it straight back up again!
There was a blip in my enjoyment, though, and it brought it down from 4 stars to 3.75 - sexy stuff. I get that it was mostly played for laughs and irony, but it did take over a little bit too much page time for my liking. But it didn't effect my rating too much in the end.
The audiobook was 1000% worth it. I mean, anything narrated by Gates McFadden, LeVar Burton, Brent Spiner, Patrick Stewart, and Jonathan Frakes among many others will equal amazingness. I'm not usually into full cast dramatic audiobooks, (because at 3.5x speed all the sound effects are very strange) but for this book, it is all made up for by the absolutely star-studded line up.
(Oh my word. I am half watching the rugby while writing this and accidentally wrote "star-studded line out" instead of "line up".)...more
I could write an entire dissertation on We by Yevgeny Zamyatin*, but I'm not going to do anything like that. The only thing I am goingRating: ?? stars
I could write an entire dissertation on We by Yevgeny Zamyatin*, but I'm not going to do anything like that. The only thing I am going to say is that everyone in this book sounds like a droid from Star Wars: AP-5, BD-1, D-503, I-330, O-90, R-13, TC-14. Bet you can't tell of those were characters from this novel and which were droids. Even I can’t, and I made the list.
*No, it is not lost on me that the author has the same first name as Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Russian mercenary dude who "died" during the Russian invasion of Ukraine recently. I suppose it is just like two people being called Paul, but because it is in Russian it stands out more to my English ears....more
How did Agatha Christie write such a good mystery with her first go?? The twist in The Mysterious Affair At Styles is so clever, and yeRating: 3 stars
How did Agatha Christie write such a good mystery with her first go?? The twist in The Mysterious Affair At Styles is so clever, and yet it was Christie's first attempt at a detective story! I am dumbfounded as to how on Earth she managed this....more
Lost in Time was good, but it had obvious flaws. It was entertaining, it was never a chore to read, but it had major draw backs that keRating: 2 stars
Lost in Time was good, but it had obvious flaws. It was entertaining, it was never a chore to read, but it had major draw backs that kept it from being a "good book", in my eyes at least.
The premise was cool: in the future, there is a quantum physicist called Sam Anderson, and due to an unfortunate set of circumstances, his daughter is about to be wrongly arrested for murder with all the evidence needed to convict. So Sam decides to confess and go to jail in her place. But he doesn't go to jail. He goes to the dinosaur age (more on the "dinosaur" part of "dinosaur age" later). You see, by 2027 humanity has found a way to send people back in time, and it is used in place of the death penalty to send criminals 201,320,641 years in the past (why it is so specific, I have no idea). It is no secret that my Whovian-ass loves time travel - it was really the only reason I picked this book up - and that part of Lost in Time was quite good, but everything else let it down.
While the fact that this book was so fast paced made it compulsively readable, it was also what lead to one of its biggest issues: the characters. The pacing was so balls to the wall that there was very little time (bar the first few chapters) to get invested in the characters and their relationships. There was a major twist about halfway through (that I won't spoil) and we really needed to sit with this character and unpack the implications of this knowledge for the rest of the narrative to land emotionally. But the twist didn't feel legitimate for a very long period of time, all because we rushed through this important reaction. The character just accepted it and treated this life shattering, world altering event like it was just a Tuesday. Sure, we can guess they stewed and fretted about it for days, but all we actually see (i.e. all that is actually written) is them learning the information and spewing up (literally) in response, but then next page we skip forward in time and they have fully processed the information and are moving on with their goal. This was supposed to be the twistiest twist of all the twists! Outlander lady even even praises it in her author blurb on the front cover! And we don't even get to unpack the impact of this highly venerated twist in the actual book?! WHY WAS IT INCLUDED AT ALL THEN????!!!!!!
Along with the stunted characters, the writing could be a little on the weak side at times. This book is the king of only telling and refusing to do even a little bit of showing instead. This is a direct quote:
"[Blank] studied her face and shook his head. 'I thought I was the hero. But it was you, all along. The price you paid. All those years you gave to this. Half your life. Most would've given up.' "
Well, no kidding! This is a pretty obvious conclusion to draw from the actions that have taken place! We don't need you to spell it out for us! This was hardly the only instance of this; it was a staple of this book's prose to overly explain and under demonstrate plot points and character beats. It did make everything move rather quickly, so maybe that was the intent all along, but sacrificing proper character development for speedy pacing is not a worthy trade in my eyes.
I don't know where to put this, but there was also a Star Trek joke, which I greatly appreciated, though you would think a Doctor Who joke would be more thematically appropriate, but I'll take what I can get.
Also, if anyone tells you that you should read this because you like Jurassic Park DO NOT LISTEN TO THEM. There are dinosaurs in the background and mentioned for the first half of the book, but then the narrative shifts and we do not hear about them. At all. I'm not exaggerating. I don't know all if this would be considered a spoiler, but I have receipts: the last appearance of a dinosaur in this book is in chapter 43 out of 80. There is no mention of them in the second half of the book at all. This is not Jurassic Park, regardless of what the marketing will tell you. To illustrate this point further, we "see" the first dinosaurs in chapter 17 and their appearances end at the aforementioned 43. Out of these 26 chapters, thirteen take place in dino time. That's thirteen chapters out of the entire book; barely 61 pages. Percentage wise, only 16.25% of chapters and just 13.53% of pages directly involve dinosaurs. PLUS, if you want to get really anal and overly granular, (which as it appears I do) most of the time spent in the Triassic is taken up by flash backs to the non-dino world! Did I spend way to long on those stats and made writing this review a weeks long project? YOU BET I DID.
For me the first half of this book was part Interstellar part Castaway (note: neither of these movies have dinosaurs in them- OK SHUT UP ABOUT THE DAMN DINOS NOW.) The second half I'm not going to get much into because of spoilers, but trust me when I say it was another book. Totally different tone, different atmosphere, different characters (effectively), different setting, almost a different world even (figuratively)... and I'm verging into major spoiler territory, so I better stop now. All I want to say is that it is a book of two very distinctive halves, and whether that is a good or bad thing is really up to interpretation.
All that being said, Lost in Time is the perfect popcorn read. I know it seems like I hated every minute of this book, and reading this review back I have kind of sort of maybe ripped it to shreds, but this is truly not the worst thing in the world. It is a perfectly serviceable thriller. The only thing I'm really mad about is the misleading marketing around thE STUPID DINOSAURS. I MEAN IT'S ALL OVER THE COVER AND I-...more