Of the post-apocalyptic and/or dystopic YA I’ve been reading (and there is so much of it lately!), Divergent was probably the most promising start once the ridiculous premise is forgiven, and Insurgent is mostly also pretty solid— not in the least because it promises that the third book will explain that ridiculous premise, which I was not really expecting an explanation to at all. Kudos for that!

The biggest problem Insurgent suffers from, and to be honest that a lot of novels suffer from, is that the main characters make nonsensical choices or have ridiculous arguments seemingly just to further the plot, rather than because they make the least lick of sense. Tris and Four fall victim to some of this, with Four acting pretty rude (why does Tris always need to be the one who has to understand his side? Why can’t he understand hers more), and it’s unclear what impact this will have in the finale.

The direction the plot is taking is definitely not one I would have guessed, although I have been curious about what the world is like outside of the city in which Divergent takes place. So often these apocalyptic series don’t talk about or pay only lip service to other areas— I recently watched a dystopian anime that focuses on a particular Japanese metropolis that has adopted a remarkable crime-prevention system and does not really talk about whether it is in use elsewhere —that I guess I just didn’t expect it to go there, but go there it apparently will.

So I guess if the biggest weakness of Insurgent is some of those character interactions, its biggest strength is that it makes the third book look quite promising. Can’t wait!

Straight-up guilty pleasure.

I thought I had already reviewed this and now I wish I had done so before reading the sequel, but basically someone came up with the idea of doing something like The Hunger Games, but without all that nasty violence and dialing up the romance angle to over 9,000.

The result is The Selection, set in a distant-future of the U.S., which has become ruled by a dynastic monarchy and a ruthless caste system. Like The Hunger Games, everyone is divided out by a number, but in this case your number is your caste (and usually your career set), not your geographical location. Our heroine, America (no, really), is a 5 who is in love with a 6. Unwilling to see her lower herself, her secret boyfriend Aspen breaks up with her and tells her to enter the Selection. The Selection is basically The Bachelor: Prince Edition.

So Mer enters and, shock of all shocks, becomes one of the Elite, selected to participate in the competition. She goes, hoping to leave behind her broken heart, and finds that in spite of herself she quite likes the earnest and well-intended Prince Maxon, and also closely befriends some of her competitors (though there is the token really nasty manipulative woman, naturally).

In the backdrop comes something considerably more interesting: rebels are fighting to take down the crown. One set of rebels, the Northerners, attack frequently but are mostly just disruptive. The Southerners, however, attack less often and are considerably more violent and lethal. Unfortunately most of this plotline stays in the background for now, focusing instead on America’s romantic dilemma as Aspen suddenly appears at the palace at a guard…and feels like a dumb-dumb for letting her go.

Is there more promise in the second book? Well, maybe…kind of. But don’t expect it to go too similar to The Hunger Games. America doesn’t feel like as much of the revolutionary type as Katniss.

Throughout the weekend we put on a variety of events revolving around the three PSYCHO-PASS guests: Katsuyuki Motohiro (Executive Director), Naoyoshi Shiotani (Director), and George Wada (Producer). The guests were enthusiastic and game for everything we wanted to do, including throwing a special exclusive party for select PSYCHO-PASS fans (we gave away tickets via Twitter, panels, and at the cosplay gathering). The fans were awesome as well, and I think everyone really enjoyed everything we put together.

We also filmed what I’m hoping turn out to be some REALLY great extras for when PSYCHO-PASS comes out on home video, which we are tentatively expecting to be in the first quarter of 2014. ♥

It was great working with the Sakura-Con crew as well as my phenomenal FUNimation coworkers. Thanks to everyone who participated in and/or enjoyed all the activities!

If you haven’t gotten a chance to watch PSYCHO-PASS yet you can catch the whole series on FUNimation.com and/or Hulu!

Throne of Glass i

The plot does not emphasize the game especially, favoring instead to focus on Celaena’s responses— responses to competing to work for someone she considers an enemy, to her growing fondness for all three of her companions (and Dorian in a romantic fashion, although there’s no subtlety to the triangle the novel is going for), and to the sinister supernatural murders that keep taking place.

On the aforementioned triangle: the romantic elements are blatant and present enough that, if you prefer to avoid such things, you’ll probably want to skip this series. However, there’s no explosive ridiculous drama thus far— no Tiger’s Curse triangular nonsense, at least so far.

My biggest complaint for Throne of Glass would be that the antagonists tend to err on the side of mustache-twirlingly evil, and that while I like that Celaena is a smart enough character to play detective a bit, the mystery sort of goes the direction you’d expect, in a very classic fashion. However, it’s very neatly wrapped in to everything else that goes on, so that complaint is minor.

I’m looking forward to learning a bit more about the antagonists that have been set up in the next book, and I’ve also picked up all of the prequel novellas, which should demonstrate fairly well that I enjoyed this one. Celaena is a smart (if impetuous, occasionally to the point of straining credulity) and capable heroine and the romantic elements are sort of treated as a side bonus thus far, not a key element of the story, which I like. We’ll see how well that carries on when the next book comes out in August!

THAT BEING SAID…I suspect your enjoyment of this book will depend entirely on how able you are to set aside the ludicrous concept BEHIND the setting, which is basically that one day, a human society decided that Hogwarts had the right idea and they decided to split themselves into “factions” based on values like courage (Dauntless), wisdom (Erudite), peace (Amity), self-sacrifice (Abnegation), and honesty (Candor). And then attempted to enforce that one value above all else in every situation. Anyone in a faction (chosen at the age of 16 and then initiated into) who does something distinctly counter to those values, or who drops out of or fails initiation, becomes a “factionless”/homeless wanderer.

…Yeah. So if you can get past that this idea is kind of…goofy, you can enjoy this book. Otherwise you’ll laugh yourself silly in the first few chapters and move along, I’d think.

Personally, I enjoyed it enough that I picked up and finished its follow-up, Insurgent, which has hinted at some of the actual origins for society dividing itself up in such a silly way. We’ll see when the third book comes out whether it really makes any sense.

The fifteen stories are also available as individual Kindle singles, and if I had to recommend just one or two I think they would be the aforementioned, Kevin Liu’s “The Veiled Shanghai,” and “The Cobbler of Oz” by Jonathan Maberry, which features no familiar characters but a sweet tale of a tiny winged monkey and a kind shoemaker. I must begrudgingly admit that Orson Scott Card’s short, “Off to See the Emperor,” is well-done, and I also quite liked Tad Williams’ story incorporating Oz into his other novels’ universe, Otherland, although I haven’t read any of those.

There’s nothing in here that will change your life, but there’s enough variety that if you’re interested in the Oz stories as an adult, you’ll find at least a few that please you.

Well, here’s one thing I’m working on: PSYCHO-PASS, the highly-pedigreed new series from Production I.G (Ghost in the Shell), Gen Urobuchi (Madoka Magica), and director Katsuyuki Motohiro (BLOOD-C: The Last Dark, the Bayside Shakedown TV drama series).

The first episode is online right now, so check it out!

In the first episodes, the focus is primarily on Sigourney Weaver’s Elaine Barrish, but in the latest two episodes (numbers four and five) her role has degenerated into basically moralizing at everyone around her, from the current administration’s president and vice-president (the persistently douche-cast Dylan Baker) to her husband to her kids and anyone else she’s in a scene with…which almost entirely excludes the other “strong female character” on the show, reporter Susan Berg. And yes,I am excluding Ellen Burstyn’s character, who swings from mildly amusing to unredeemably obnoxious and back again.

Instead we have storylines ranging from bulimia to drug addiction to both simple and complicated ethical dilemmas in journalism. (Durrr?) The supporting characters have ceased supporting and taken over the screen, which might work if this show were going to be twice as long, but when you have about 6.5 hours total, covering subplots about the other characters is distracting enough, but some of those subplots get very cliché. Okay, all of them, really.

I don’t regret the time I’ve spent, but I really think that the show took a wrong turn around episode four and didn’t quite make it back.

Like a way to win cool autographed stuff for the sci-fi/fighting fanservice fest Freezing!

I’m sure buy now most of you have heard about Ouya, the Kickstarter phenomenon with a pretty high goal ($950,000) that it surpassed in less than a day. Why? Because it’s a $99 Android console for your television. Even if you never get or play a single game on the thing, it’s already got potential access to Netflix, Hulu, all the various apps available for your Android phone, and it offers all that in a 1080p HD experience. I could watch Crunchyroll and Funimation anime on it. I can work on my Google docs on it. I haven’t yet invested in the Kickstarter (money’s a little tight) but I’m already pretty sure I want one of these.

But more than that, I want it to succeed. I love current-gen consoles, don’t get me wrong— I’m particularly a PS3/Sony fangirl when it comes to gaming systems —but I’m always excited to see someone shake up an industry by doing something productive like this (as opposed to destructive practices, like underpricing a product and losing money on it in order to put other companies out of business).

The excitement over the Kickstarter’s success, currently at about $2.6 million with 28 days left to go, isn’t enough to really make it a successful console though…if you got one of these babies right now it would basically become a highly-functional Roku box alternative. You might be able to play some of the games depending on how well they defaulted into working with a controller. But right this second, it’s not really a gaming console. The people who are buying it are enthusiasts, but what the makers will need is the ability to reach out to the vast gamer market— not just indie fans and industry wonks, but hardcore AND casual gamers.

whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

Right now, Ouya is a cool-looking toy and a great opportunity for indie developers. But getting some of the big names on board has the potential to truly revolutionize the gaming world, instead of being a sizable but non-permanent blip in the data.