The Innocent Mage concluded

Asher is the reason I like The Innocent Mage. Asher is not your typical fantasy hero, there are no dreams of fame and renown, no wishes to be a knight or other hero. He wants to be what he was raised to be, a fisherman, he just wants his own boat to sail with his father and to break away from his brothers' business. Asher isn't even a reluctant hero, always saving people and being heroic but trying to deny it, claiming to be a bad man. Asher has no idea that he is everything to Jervale's Heir and The Circle. It's very refreshing to read a fantasy novel where the lead is neither a reluctant hero nor a typical knight of lore. If you like fantasy novels you will like The Innocent Mage, Asher and the rest of the cast of characters are realistic and fun to read. The plot does not twist and is fairly straightforward, but very entertaining. If The Innocent Mage is any evidence to the quality of Karen Miller's (a.k.a K. E. Mills) work, then she is a fine author indeed, and I think I'll be reading a lot more of her work.

The Innocent Mage

The Innocent Mage (first book in the Kingmaker, Kingbreaker series) takes place in a kingdom called Lur, which cut itself off completely from the rest of the world several hundred years before the story takes place. The citizens of Lur consist of two peoples, the Doranens fair haired, beautiful, noble, magic workers, and the dark haired, hard working commoners, the Olken. The Olken have always lived in Lur, whereas the Doranen fled to Lur from the homeland by a woman called Barl who by now is basically Jesus, she cut Lur off from the rest of the world to protect her people and the Olken from her evil lover Morg. The main character is an Olken and the youngest son of a fisherman, his name is Asher and he is twenty years old. Asher dreams of buying a fishing boat for his father and himself and of having enough money for his father to live out the rest of his days comfortably. To make these dreams come true Asher sets off to spend a year in the capitol city of Dorana working and saving all he earned. The book is written in three parts and the bulk of the story takes place in fair Dorana. Asher is completely unaware that a secret society called the Circle watches over him, their leader known to them as Jervale's heir (it has not really been explained who Jervale was) has proclaimed him to be the Innocent mage, a kind of secret messiah that the Circle has been waiting for, for centuries. I won't give away anymore of the plot but I will quote to you Jervale's prophecy. "In the Final Days shall come the Innocent Mage, born to save the world from blood and death. He shall enter the House of the Usurper, He shall learn their ways, He shall earn their love, He shall lay down his life, And Jervale's Heir shall know him, and guide him, and enlighten him not."

book reviews

Sorry for the delay in posting, but Eric has given me a new idea for posts. He suggested that I post book reviews. It's going to take me awhile to write up a review that really satisfies me, but I do have a book in mind for my first review, It's called "The Innocent Mage" by Karen Miller. It's a fantasy novel that I read very recently, and I thought was rather good. It was slow reading at first but it started to pick up the pace a few chapters in. When I finished it I went out less than a week later to get the sequel "The Awakened Mage", but I won't read it until I finish the review of the first. If it takes me very long to write my review I may just post it a piece at a time.

Five Science Fiction Shows You Just HAVE to Watch

After taking a day and a half to write my last post, my DC hero top ten list, I am taking another break from the DC Universe and today I am bringing you five scifi shows that are must see shows. Following this post I plan to rank all of the Star Trek films, I am not sure how long this will take me. Note, I have not ranked the five scifi shows, I don't believe I ever could. So without further ado, the five scifi shows you just HAVE to watch.



Doctor Who

Doctor Who is a British scifi program aired on the British Broadcasting Corporation, or BBC. It's first run lasted 26 years from 1963 to 1989 and Doctor Who holds the Guniss Book record for longest running show.So far the second run of Doctor Who has been just as successful as the last and is currently in it's fifth season. The Doctor is a humanoid alien over nine hundred years old who travels through time and space usually with a young woman companion in his Time And Relative Dimensions In Space (TARDIS) which from the outside looks like a 1950s British police call box, and is much bigger on the inside. The Doctor's life consists of nothing but adventures, he travels to interesting events in Earth history as well as to alien worlds, and though he never intends to interfere, he always gets mixed up in whatever bizarre thing that is happening. The Doctor saves the world at least once a season, and sometimes he does it nearly every episode.

Firefly
Firefly is a space western that was created by writer and director Joss Whedon, the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and most recently Dollhouse. Nathan Fillion stars as Captain Malcolm Reynolds, who owns a Firefly class cargo ship called Serenity. In this version of the future many people do whatever they can to survive, and in the case of the Serenity crew this means taking on jobs that aren't exactly legal. While they aren't always on the right side of the law they do have morals that they follow (mostly) and this means that they do a fair amount of rescuing as well as robbing. Even going as far as getting a price on all their heads to return a shipment of medicines they stole in a train job.

Star Trek T.O.S.

You can't truly call yourself a fan of scifi without at least watching this show. Star Trek

was created by Gene Roddenberry in 1966 and it ran for three seasons before being canceled, stripped and put into syndication which allowed it to gain a large cult following in the 1970s. The show followed the crew of the Federation Starship Enterprise Captained by James T. Kirk, on a five year mission to explore new worlds and boldly go where no man has gone before. Important members of the crew include First Officer Mr. Spock, Cheif Medical Officer Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy, Communications Officer Leutenant Uhura, and Cheif Engineer "Scotty".

Torchwood

Torchwood is the hit spin off of Doctor Who, a darker, raunchier show than it's parent series. I see this show as a kind of British MIB ( Men In Black), the Torchwood Institute is one that operates outside the government and beyond the United Nations. Their mission is to monitor alien activity and harness alien technology. The Torchwood Institute was created by Queen Victoria on the same day that she both knighted and banished the tenth Doctor. Her eyes had been opened to the existence of aliens and she was determined to protect her empire against an attack from those aliens. The series follows Torchwood Three, a division of the Institute based in Cardiff, Whales where there is a rift in time and space. It is their duty to monitor anything coming in or out of that rift. The protagonist of the show is one Captain Jack Harkness, a former companion of the Doctor. Jack leads Torchwood Three which consists of Ianto Jones, Toshiko Saato, Owen Harper, and Gwen Cooper.

Star Trek T.N.G.
Set nearly a century after the original series, Star Trek the Next Generaltion follows the crew of a new Starship Enterprise, this time Captained by one Jean-Luc Picard. His crew includes First Officer Will Riker, Security Chief Worf, Chief Engineer Geordi La Forge, Chief Medical Officer Beverly Crusher, Ship's Counsellor Deanna Troi, and Second Officer Data. This spin off was much more successful than it's parent show, running a full seven seasons, and then having four movies of it's own.

Kick Ass continued

Warning Spoiler Alert!!
There are a few movies that I want to see this summer, all of them look good, especially Iron Man Two but I really think it is going to be hard to top an eleven year old girl brutally murdering a bunch of mob thugs to the song Bad Reputation. Admittedly Hit Girl's use of profanity has brought about a lot of contraversy but I believe it fits her character. Her father (aka Big Daddy) is an ex-cop who was framed by the mob boss and sent to prison for five years as a drug dealer. His pregnant wife couldn't take it and offed herself, the doctors were able to save Mindy (Hit Girl) who was raised by her father's ex-partner until he was released from prison. Ever since he got out and got Mindy back Big Daddy has been preparing her for the biggest fight of their lives. When they see Kick Ass (Dave, the star) on tv he inspires them to find their own heroic identities. This movie is seriously great and all action movie fans should see it.

This movie was Kick Ass!

I'm going to take a small break from the DC Universe now to talk about an awesome new movie, but we will come back to DC soon with my top ten list of greatest DC Heroes.
Last weekend my fiance Eric turned 31 and for his birthday we went to the movies. This post is going to be all about the movie we saw, which you should have guessed from the title of this post was Kick Ass.
Again I must warn you that this post will contain spoilers for the movie.
First off, if you aren't a big fan of violence you shouldn't see this movie. For example if a movie like the Matrix was too violent for your tastes DO NOT SEE KICK ASS! However, if like many of us geeks out there you enjoy a blood bath now and then, this is a must see movie. Kick Ass takes place in NYC, one in which the only super heroes are in the comics and movies. Our star (Dave) is an unassuming young man who is nothing more than average. His mother died of a brain anurism at the breakfast table, he has exactly two friends and is invisible to girls. Dave comes up with the idea of becoming a super hero when he gets tired of being mugged while others watch and refuse to help. His first attempt at heroism is less than steller, he gets his ass beaten, gets stabbed and then hit by a car. After a stay in the hospital Dave comes back to school to find that a rumor has been spread that he is gay. This is due to a police report claiming that he was found naked because he begged them not to mention his costume.
Okay time for a lunch break more on this great movie later.

Final Arkham Asylum Post

Probably my favorite thing about Batman: Arkham Asylum are the stealth missions, swinging from gargoyle to gargoyle doing inverted and silent take downs on all the armed goons from black gate. Hopefully more of the Rogues Gallery Criminals will appear in the next game, characters like TwoFace and the Riddler. Though the Riddler does not make an actual appearance we do here from him often as we try to complete the many challanges he has placed around the island for Batman to solve. The Riddler challanges can be found in two forms, trophies hidden in out of the way locals, and in riddles that you must solve by scanning objects with your cowl's detective mode. If you haven't yet played Batman: Arkham Asylum you really need to give it a try, not only is it one of only two good Batman video games, it is also one of the best video games to date.

More on Arkham Asylum

This time I thought I'd go a little more in-depth about why I love Batman: Arkham Asylum.
Warning Spoilers for the game.
Okay so the game starts with a little cut scene where-in Batman is bringing The Joker back to Arkham Asylum Island. As the guards take back control of The Clown Prince of Crime you take control of The Dark Knight. (this game is great you guys, seriously) the first thing you really do in the game is fight a set of the Joker's goons he sprung out of Gotham's Blackgate Prison by setting a fire there. (like I said spoilers). When you start the game you have about three or so moves, a basic batarang, and a grappling hook. however as you gain experience you also earn upgrades in your fighting abilities and gadgets. The graphics in this game are awesome, and lucky for us true Batman fans Kevin Conroy the voice of Batman in the animated series voiced Batman in the game. The first big mission in this game is to rescue Commissioner Gordon which gets inturupted by an encounter with Scarecrow. There are three encounters with with Scarecrow. Harley Quinn has a complete new look for the game but she is still the same old Harley trying her hardest to please the Joker and failing badly every time.
Okay it's getting late more on this tomorrow.

first post/ Batman Arkham Asylum

To start I'll tell you a little about myself, and my life as a geek. My name is Amanda and I'm 20 years old. I'm engaged to be married to my soulgeek Eric who turned 31 yesterday. My family are all geeks and I believe that they have raised me to be the biggest and best geek I can be. I was two years old when I fell in love with the Bat. As a little girl the first thing I wanted to be when I grew up was batman. It didn't matter that he was fictional, or that I was a girl, I was determined. By now I have realized that it would be impossible for me to become Batman so as a consolation I have earned my Associate of Applied Science in Criminal Justice and will soon be attempting for my Bachelors. Anyway this blog is probably not going to focus solely on Batman, but all things geek. I am into video games and scifi as well as fantasy and anime. However the rest of this post will focus on the video game Batman: Arkham Asylum. Eric and I pre-ordered Arkham Asylum but when we first got the game I just couldn't get into it. I didn't touch the game for months but just the other day I decided to pick it back up. I deleted my old save file and started the game fresh, and what can I say, I loved it. Eric bought me the guide, which aside from being helpful is an interesting read. If you're a fan of Batman and like action video games you should definitely give this game a try. With help from the guide you can earn every trophy and defeat every enemy without too much effort. After playing this game I can't wait for the sequal, after all there are very few good Batman video games out there.