Book Review: Ark Royal

First of All: So I've liked this page on Facebook which talks a lot about Fantasy and Sci-fi stuff.  Most of the time, they just post memes which only nerdy people would get, but occasionally, they'll recommend a book which they liked.  When they posted a short review about Ark Royal, by Christopher G. Nuttall, I got curious and decided to look into it further.  To be honest, it's actually really good.

Second of All: The Book!
Everything changed for the people of Earth once they discovered the gravimetric Tram lines that ran from star to star.  A brilliant scientist developed a device called the Puller drive, which would allow starships to travel these lines in a heartbeat, and thus humanity began its expansion into the stars.  Earth's various political powers have each claimed several inhabited worlds, and each of them have been building up military strength and developing new, more efficient ships for the better part of a century.

Captain Ted Smith, the commanding officer aboard an ancient British carrier named H.M.S. Ark Royal, knows that his command is more punishment than anything.  The decrepit old ship was one of the first battleships built, and now, at 70 years old, it's kept running by sheer determination and grit from its minimal crew.  Everyone in the British navy knows that Ark Royal is where they send the washouts and failed members of the Navy, and it's driven Captain Smith into alcoholism.

Everything changes one day when he's called to a meeting with the British Navy's highest officer, the First Space Lord, who gives him grave news.  Humanity has made first contact with an alien race, and the extraterrestrials aren't friendly.  All of mankind's forces are mustering in the first combined effort to defend human space in history, and the Ark Royal is needed.  With a new, ambitious first officer, Commander James Fitzwilliam, in tow, Captain Smith begins preparations to take his old carrier out into the battle with a vastly superior alien race.

Third of All: The Review!
Going into the book, I was a bit skeptical of how good it would be, since the cover seems to suggest self-publishing, or perhaps an inexperienced publisher.  But I was very pleasantly surprised when I got into the book.
Christopher Nuttall weaves a fantastically real-feeling universe, where tensions between nations run high and the stakes are always increasing.  He portrays the burdens of aristocracy, the weight of command, and the very real repercussions that war has among common citizenry, all with a very skilled and talented hand.  His characters felt real, with passions and history and strengths and weaknesses all of their own, and even the minor, unimportant characters had depth.

Also, the alien race he created was amazingly well-made.  Even though the reader never finds out much about them, the amount of detail he gives us about what their ships look like, their physical appearance, and other aspects (which I won't mention due to spoilers) all demonstrate that he's put a lot of thought into this alien species.

So well was his universe created that the dynamics of space travel and the nature of the ships in his world made for some very real-feeling situations in the book, where the characters' survival was always hanging just on the edge.  The space combat was very well executed, and felt real as well.

There were two things that didn't sit well with me, though.  First and foremost, there was some sexual content in the book.  It was set up by some real-feeling psychological issues, and the situation that resulted because of it was very realistic, but I was disappointed that such a great story had to include it.  Also, there were a few typos, and some times where phrases were repeated in pretty close succession, though this issue could very easily be fixed with a good copy edit.

Overall, I thought this was a great book, and I hope that he gets around to writing another.  Were it not for the above mentioned issues, Ark Royal would have got a near-perfect grade, but as it stands, I give it a Four and a Half out of Six Nerd Stars.

Movie Review: Krull

First of All:  Last night, as I was bashing my mind against a paper I had to do for class (the paper was winning), a friend of mine called me up and said "Hey, we're having a movie night, it's a great old film, one of the first ones to have Liam Neeson in it."   Well, me being a huge Liam Neeson fan, I jumped at  the prospect and ordered a tactical retreat from the paper, which laughed scornfully at me while I ran.  When I got there, they revealed the movie was Krull.  I'd never heard of it before, which isn't surprising, since the movie is older than I am, but the cover had that sweet bladed throwing star of death thing you can see in the picture, so I figured "How bad could it be?" and sat down to watch.

Second of All: It's hard to fit Krull into a specific genre...it's got splashes of science fiction, a whole ton of fantasy, a little humor, and a tender part that almost makes you cry (it involves a little kid and a puppy, so you know how that kind of thing goes).  I'm not sure what to call it...science fantasy?  Fantasci fiction?  I dunno.  Anyway, so the movie opens with a giant, mountain-like spaceship (no, really, it looks like a mountain) flying down to this planet--called Krull, hence the movie name--and landing there, quoting a prophecy that the princess will choose a husband, who will become the ruler of the world, and their kid will become the ruler of the galaxy.  So this big mountain thing lands and tons of guys in black armor ride out on horses with spears.   Yeah, spear-wielding horsemen come out of a spaceship.  You see why it's hard to place the genre.

The plot revolves around the princess--who gets kidnapped by the alien bad guys so that the big evil nasty can marry her and be the one who rules in the prophecy--and her prince fiancee, who is desperately trying to get her back.  The prince, in order to save her, has to go find an ancient artifact called "The Glaive" (no, not the European weapon that's a spear with a longer blade), which is the pointy star of death on the cover.  After that, he has to actually find the bad guy spaceship, which is hard because at dawn every day, it teleports to a new location on the planet.

Third of All: The review!
To be honest, I'm not quite sure what to think of this movie.  It was a complete genre bash, where dudes with swords and axes were fighting aliens with laser spears, and they had magical horses trying to chase down a spaceship.  It was a bit...odd.

I have a few other eyebrow-raisers, too, but I won't be too hard on it, since it is an old movie from a time when directors didn't need a perfect script to make a movie.  First, the kingdoms where the prince and princess came from were these ancient enemies who hated each other, but as soon as the prince and princess are about to get married, they're suddenly totally cool with each other.  Of course, it doesn't actually happen, since the princess gets kindapped by evil space aliens, but what really kind of bothered me was that both kingdoms are never mentioned again in the whole movie--other than the prince suddenly becoming king when his dad dies in the fighting.  The new king-prince person also spends a remarkably short time grieving after he wakes up in a courtyard full of his dead family and friends.

Also, regarding his quest for The Glaive, he defies death by climbing steep mountainsides and lava, but when he gets it, he never uses it the entire movie until the end.  It could have completely owned so many of the bad guys they faced throughout the movie, but no, he kept it all tied up on his belt while swinging swords at them. Also, at the end, once he does pull out this awesome--and I mean awesome--weapon, which is thrown and can be controlled with your mind to whack as many bad guys as pop up, it gets under five minutes of screen time, and it only takes down about six or seven aliens before proving ineffective at killing the main bad alien boss guy.  If it's worthless against the Beast--as he's called--then why did they go after it in the first place?  And if it's ultimately only effective against his minions, then why wasn't he using it the whole movie?  It makes me sad when a movie doesn't use a sweet weapon's ultimate potential.  It turns out it's some kind of magic wedding fire that can kill the Beast, which I definitely didn't see coming.

Aside from other guffs I have, I think the greatest of them all was the lack of Liam Neeson.  He was the reason I agreed to watch the show, but his screen time fit into about fifteen mintues, and--Spoiler alert--he dies a redshirt's death at the evil spaceship.  Granted, it was really early in his career, but it's still pretty obvious--in the bits of glances we see of him--that he's a much better actor than 90% of the cast.

As far as content goes, it was very clean, and I guess you could pull out a message about love persisting against all odds or something, but I'll leave that up to your interpretation, if you ever choose to watch this movie.

All in all, I'd have to say I give this movie 3 out of 6 Nerd Stars.