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- TV show developed by Scott Smith for Amazon Prime
- Released 21 October 2022
- Starring Chloë Grace Moretz, Gary Carr, Jack Reynor, JJ Feild, T'Nia Miller, and others
- 1 Season of 8 Episodes, renewed for a second season
Flynne’s brother is hired by a shady company out of Columbia to beta-test the most real sim videogame ever played. Flynne subs for him, and can hardly believe what she is playing. As her suspicion towards the simulation grows and she pushes to speak to their ostensibly Colombian employers, she learns that this is no mere simulation. This starts a process that will rock Flynne’s perception of the world she lives in to her core.
This review relates to season 1
While I enjoyed watching The Peripheral, this is another tough review to write because I felt there is a big quality difference between the different elements that came together to make the show.
As I wrote in my review of the Gibson novel that The Peripheral is based on, the novel’s universe is an interesting synthesis of several science fiction ideas, though the plot is perhaps a bit thin. In this case, I think it makes a lot of sense that show creator and writer Scott Smith took the novel’s storyline as inspiration rather than gospel.
Unfortunately, the additions and embellishments to Gibson’s story are hit and miss. Some additions add a lot to the story – particularly, the expansion of Flynne’s world and the attention given to Netherton’s childhood. But others appear to be included mostly to create opportunities for action scenes, or to fit into the pattern of the Game-of-Thronesifying of television: the need to have ‘complex’ politics, betrayals, subversions, alliances, etc. I think that element of the rewrite is overambitious, and I have trouble buying into the villain Smith introduced.
This paragraph might contain a couple of slight spoilers – but I think the biggest ‘miss’ in the television adaptation of The Peripheral is how the rewrite changes the ‘power dynamic’ between the ‘real world’ and the stub, and the perception of the stub of the main characters. In the book, the ‘future’ characters – including the ‘good guys’ – happily rewrite the entire history of the stub because of a criminal investigation in their own world. In the series however, the stub and characters in it are taken much more seriously, treated like ‘real people’ in a way that the book simply doesn’t. I think that is an element of social commentary that made the novel fascinating that simply got lost in translation.
But like I hinted at, while the story and sci fi are decent, this adaptation of The Peripheral is very much about the visuals and action sequences. The visuals are good – I love the merger of near future technologies with a very grounded background, and the production value is great. I don’t generally watch TV for the action sequences, but the fight scenes in The Peripheral really pop. I’m sure Chloe Moretz did a lot of training to get all the choreography down.
I think I am mostly a little disappointed because the novel has a lot of potential that didn’t make it onto the screen. Some of the adaptational choices show that Smith recognised that potential, but I feel like he unfortunately failed to tap into it. Overall, a relatively weak three star rating – I didn’t mind watching, but if you can stomach a bit of 18+ television, I would recommend something like Altered Carbon instead.
- Novel written by Elizabeth Lim
- Published August 30, 2022
- Part one of Six Crimson Cranes (duology)
I recently read Six Crimson Cranes by the same author. This is the sequel to that book, and to be fully honest, I wouldn’t have purchased it if I hadn’t accidentally bought this one first without knowing it was a sequel.
As I stated in my review of Six Crimson Cranes, Lim’s work is perhaps just not for me.
Shiori as a main character is still not very interesting to me, and the same goes for pretty much all the other characters in this book. The first couple of chapters, which take place in the Dragon realm under the sea, start off promisingly. Unfortunately, these chapters have very little to do with the rest of the book. A wildly unnecessary love triangle is implied, but fortunately not delivered on. I stated in my previous review that Seryu would become relevant in this book, which to be fair was an assumption on my part. Past page 150 he’s basically gone again, which is unfortunate because he occasionally does threaten to be interesting.
The plot of The Dragon’s Promise is very convoluted and I would honestly struggle to summarise it. I didn’t find myself wanting to find out how it would end at all.
Overall, if you really loved Six Crimson Cranes then you’ll probably enjoy The Dragon’s Promise. As I didn’t care very much for book one, I suppose it makes sense that the sequel doesn’t really do it for me either.
- Board game designed by Manny Vega
- Artwork by Sandara Tang
- Published by Cardboard Academy
- Released in 2022
- 1-5 players (officially, but we also succesfully played it with 6!)
- Playing time: 60-120 minutes
Jasmijn and I stumbled upon the deluxe edition of this game at a Dutch Comic Con, and decided to buy it on a whim because of the cute art and the bag of ‘gold’ coins that came with it. Luckily, this is one of our best impulse purchases ever.
All in all, Flamecraft isn’t a very complicated game. You and your fellow players gather dragons and various resources in order to upgrade the different shops in town, vying for the love of the townspeople. The player with the best reputation at the end of the game wins. That’s it. Though the game is technically competitive, you’re mostly focused on your own plays and can’t really sabotage other players. In fact, you’ll have more chance being rewarded for helping other players. I really love this, and it perfectly suits Flamecraft’s feel.
Despite the simplicity of the game mechanics, there is enough variability in shops, dragons and enchantments to make every game feel different. Additionally, this game has extra rules to spice things up or to play it solo.
In summary, I love this game. Frankly, I wish I could live in this magical town full of happy and wonderfully diverse people. Every time I play Flamecraft, I immediately start to relax and smile at the art. It’s just so comfortable and sweet. Especially a recommendation for people who love cozy fantasy.
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- Book written by William Gibson
- Published 28 October 2014
- Standalone
Listened to the audiobook with Katie Leung – I liked her characterisations and accents, but she really dropped off at the end of her sentences so I had to listen a little louder than usual.
It has become a bit of a meme among our curators that I often feel “this book could have been written in fewer words”, which is often mostly a reference to what I feel is a relatively weak editor (or perhaps an author not listening to them): too much words spent on tangents, too few darlings killed.
In this case, I feel like this book could have been written in fewer words because when I finished it, I couldn’t shake the impression that it should probably have been a novella or even a short story.
Let’s take a few steps back. William Gibson is a master of science fiction, best known for Neuromancer, which is one of the most influential works in all of science fiction and spawned the genre of cyberpunk all on its own. Neuromancer, as well as Gibson’s other works, show that his sci-fi is centred around out-of-the-box ideas – technological concepts that are not that implausible but that are new. Given how derivative the speculative genres can sometimes be, Gibson’s original concepts can be really refreshing.
Interestingly, many of the more technological concepts of The Peripheral aren’t that new (ironically, that’s new for Gibson!). We’ve seen video game alternative universes in the likes of Ready Player One and The Three Body Problem, and we’ve seen transfer-of-consciousness technology in the likes of Altered Carbon (or, if you prefer watching over reading, Altered Carbon). And while Gibson does a great job of integrating these elements into The Peripheral, I feel the real innovation is perhaps not so much the technology but rather the society around it (as well as the weird philosophical implications of – slight spoiler alert – time travel and simulation theory). Gibson is really good at triggering the imagination with a few throwaway lines, and the reconstructed pet thylacines one of the characters owns are a great example of that. It’s tough to describe without giving too much away, but Gibson’s pre- and post-apocalypse are surprisingly real in a surreal way.
The Peripheral is let down by its plot, however. It just feels like… not enough happens for a 14 hour audiobook. It’s all just a little to simple – only barely enough framework to carry the worldbuilding. It is a pity, because I would have loved to read more about the world. I feel like Gibson would have been better off writing a number of short stories in this world, exploring the different possibilities of the transfer-of-consciousness technology and the existence of – spoiler alert – multiple timelines. It would, for example, have been fascinating to get a view from the bad guys’ perspective in this book.
So, where does that leave The Peripheral? It is not a bad book by a long shot, but I feel there is a lot of unrealised potential. Perhaps a bit of a weird critique. I have no trouble recommending it, but it could have been a five star.
Luckily, people have caught onto that. Gibson has written another book in the same world, Agency, which I am looking forward to getting my hands on. And I have also seen that The Peripheral has been made into a TV series, and I actually think that is a brilliant idea – I think the relatively simple plot will translate to the screen very well, and I’d love to get well-done visuals on some of Gibson’s descriptions. So I’m putting that on my to watch-list next!
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- Novel written by Elizabeth Lim
- Published July 6, 2021
- Part one of Six Crimson Cranes (duology)
I bought this book because of the stunning covers of this series. I have the Kelly Chong version of this novel and let me tell you: she’s a real beauty.
Unfortunately the actual story just wasn’t quite for me. Six Crimson Cranes is a retelling of the fairy tale The Wild Swans by Hans Christian Andersen. It follows the original fairy tale pretty directly, although it is set in an East Asian fantasy world.
I think my main issue with the book is that, while it is about 450 pages long, it never really seems to go much deeper than a fairy tale would. The main character Shiori is a stubborn spoiled princess who learns to work hard and respect others. She has magical powers, which is a Big Deal, except she never really uses them, and the story would have been no different if she hadn’t had those powers.
Her brothers never get much development because there are 6 of them (and also they spend half the story as birds, so there’s that). The main love interest is nice and brave but not much more, and also there’s a dragon we are led to believe will be an important character, but he won’t actually be relevant until the sequel. The dialogue is a little clunky and unrealistic, and the descriptions are often lacking, which meant I spent a good amount of time wondering where certain characters were, or how they got from one place to another.
I really liked the East Asian setting, but I didn’t feel like it was developed well enough to really intrigue me.
The ending also didn’t quite satisfy me, which ultimately led me to give this book 3 stars instead of 3.5. The main villain was someone I didn’t even remember being part of the story and I’m still not sure how Shiori ended up breaking the curse.
Overall, I certainly didn’t have a bad time reading this book. I definitely think this is suitable for younger readers. I think this is classified as Young Adult, but I personally think it’s most suited to teen readers.
- Book written by James S.A. Corey
- Published 26 June 2012
- Part 2 of The Expanse
I liked Leviathan Wakes a lot, so I’m actually surprised it took me half a year to get to Caliban’s War – part of the problem must be that I’m reading the series on paper, and I read more by listening than by reading. Don’t let my slowness in picking up this book discourage you from trying it though!
One of the cover blurbs for the The Expanse-book series describes them as a Hollywood-blockbuster in book form, and I think that description is pretty accurate. Caliban’s War is expertly paced, with jumps of perspective meaning there is always something going on, until all those separate lines intersect at the big climax. The subject matter doesn’t exactly make it a light read, but it is certainly a page turner, with easy prose and enough lightness in between the dark to keep it easy to digest.
The downside of the ‘blockbuster in book-form’-style, is that the story itself, while engaging, is rather run-of-the-mill. You’re not reading The Expanse for its mind-blowing plot-twists or carefully constructed mysteries, but rather for the banter between the characters and the tense moments where the bullets ricochet off the pages.
While reading Caliban’s War, it struck me that The Expanse has quite a few similarities to Brandon Sanderson’s writing: both read like movie scripts at times, with super-fast prose and lengthy battle scenes. But where I feel Sanderson’s characters never really come to life and he specialises in plot, Corey doesn’t focus on the plot too much but instead zooms in on that found family trope we see so often in space ship crews – in modern fiction like The Long Way Round to a Small Angry Planet through Firefly and Star Wars all the way back to classics (and I use that word here without meaning to attach the connotation of quality) like Ringworld.
Mixed with just enough near(ish)-future medium-hard sci-fi, The Expanse actually takes an interesting position in that list, since all of the other examples (except, perhaps, to some extent Ringworld) are really ‘sci-fi-as-a-setting’-type stories. Caliban’s War actually moves further away from hard sci-fi, a move that was already apparent by the end of Leviathan Wakes, and to be honest, I think it improves the book. It is mostly still very much within the realms of the plausible and certain elements – such as time delay in communications – remind the reader that the story is set in a universe that conforms – at least mostly – to the same rules as our own. That, in turn, makes it extra horrific when those rules still get broken.
Caliban’s War takes The Expanse in a slightly simpler direction, and I think that is probably the right place for it to go. I’m curious where the next instalments will take us, and I hope especially that we’ll get to read more from the perspective of Chrisjen Avasarala – who doesn’t love a foul-mouthed political realist grandmother who runs half of Earth’s government?
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Review: The Peripheral – Amazon Prime
Flynne’s brother is hired by a shady company out of Columbia to beta-test the most real sim videogame ever played. Flynne subs for him, and can hardly believe what she is playing. As her suspicion towards the simulation grows and she pushes to speak to their ostensibly Colombian employers, she learns that this is no mere simulation. This starts a process that will rock Flynne’s perception of the world she lives in to her core.
Review: The Dragon’s Promise – Elizabeth Lim
Princess Shiori has promised that she would return the Dragon’s pearl to its rightful owner, which leads her on a dangerous journey. On her quest, she descends into the kingdom of Dragons, far under the ocean. Meanwhile, demons still threaten the kingdom of Kiata, and Shiori is the only one who can defeat them. As she navigates between worlds of Dragons, Humans and Demons, Shiori must also face the power of the corrupted Dragon’s Pearl itself. Can she return the pearl, which at times jumps to her aid, only to betray her the next minute? And can she defeat the demons that threaten her home?
Review: Flamecraft – Manny Vega
Review of the board game Flamecraft. In a peaceful, magical town, people live and work alongside little artisan dragons that are a little like their larger (and quite dangerous) cousins. Shopkeepers greatly appreciate the help of these little dragons, for their flamecraft is a delight to all customers.
As a Flamekeeper, you are blessed with the ability to communicate with the artisan dragons. Both shopkeepers and dragons look to you to help dragons find their ideal home, enabling the wonders of flamecraft to make everyone in town more happy.
Review: The Peripheral – William Gibson
In near future rural US, Flynne’s brother, a retired marine, makes a little money helping rich folks beat video games. One day, Flynne subs for him, dropping into a surprisingly real game world where she witnesses the gruesome death of one of the game characters.
In a not quite as near future London, Wilf Netherton drops out of contact with his former boss after an attempt to make a documentary on the inhabitants of the great pacific garbage patch goes south spectacularly. A new opportunity to use his skills as a publicist soon presents itself.
Review: Six Crimson Cranes – Elizabeth Lim
Six Crimson Cranes is a retelling of the fairy tale “The Wild Swans” by Hans Christian Andersen, set in an East Asian fantasy world. The story follows Shiori, a stubborn princess. She and her six brothers have been cursed by their stepmother. Together with her animated paper bird Kiki, Shiori must learn to work hard and learn humility, in order to break the curse.
Review: Caliban’s War – James S.A. Corey
Part two of The Expanse – Jim Holden and the crew of the Rocinante once again find themselves at the center of the solar system’s politics when they discover that the use of a secret weapon on the agricultural moon of Ganymede is about to turn the tension between Earth and Mars into a war that may cause the end of all humanity. Meanwhile, Bobby, a Martian marine caught in the fighting, forges an unlikely alliance with Chrisjen Avasarala, a foul-mouthed grandmother who happens to hold a lot of strings in the Earth government.
