The world of The Handmaid’s Tale is simple to explain. Imagine one day you wake up and the world is a totally different place. Everyone is pleasant to one another, no more pollution, food made from scratch every day. Sounds perfect right? Perhaps a little too perfect? You would be right, it is. No more television, no internet, no smartphones, no games of any kind. Are you scared yet? Well, for a woman this world is an utter nightmare. Women have no rights whatsoever and are forbidden to have a job.
It only gets worse for women. In this future birth rates have dropped severely, and many women have become infertile and unable to carry or deliver healthy babies. Of course,we all know a nation only exists if there are another generation to carry it on. Women like Offred and the handmaids are the answer to that problem. A religious sect that runs the government has taken over America. Women lose their rights, doctors that practice abortions are put to death along with anyone that is homosexual. Women that are of childbearing age or have born a child successfully are forced to become handmaidens, concubines to those in charge of the government whose sole purpose is to become pregnant to their commanders (the men in charge), and give birth to a healthy baby. Once the baby is weaned the handmaiden is sent off to another commander.
Hulu took on a rather daunting task of bringing this dark tale to television. Their timing could not have been any more perfect for it either. With today’s political climate, many worry that we will wind up in such a world such as 1984 or even this one. We fear this now because these scenarios could easily happen. The series deals in flashbacks to Offred’s life. She was married and had a daughter. Now Offred is a second class citizen with no voice. However, as the series progresses, she is waking up to the world and finding the will to fight.
Elizabeth Moss is a powerhouse in this series as Offred. One can really identify with her and what she goes through. Yvonne Strahovski plays Serena Joy, once a powerful woman in the old world and now resigned to being the wife of her husband Fred played by Joseph Fiennes. While in the story Offred is the narrator, the show took the ability to branch out and tell the tales of the other handmaidens such as Ofglen, Offred’s friend who is a lesbian, and Janine, an unstable handmaid.
The pacing of this series is perfect like the opening of a flower’s petals, perfectly timed and with anticipation. As you watch each episode you get chills at the events as they unfold with each twist and turn in Offred’s life. It also covers the issues women deal with in today’s society such as slut shaming, religious oppression, reproductive rights and genital mutilation.
Hulu has set this series to only be ten episodes, I worry that they will go stale somewhere between episodes 5 through 8 but so far this is a show to watch and to take heed of its warning.
It has been a while since FromSoftware released the critically-acclaimed PS4-exclusive Bloodborne, with fans still clamoring for a sequel to this very day. However, despite that apparently not being on the horizon, fans have still been able to keep the good times rolling thanks to a comic series based on the popular game.
This new comic is called A Song of Crows, and Amazon has recently posted their product page for it that reveals lots of information. The following is an overview:
“Discover the twisted story of Eileen the Crow in the continuing comic series spinning out of Fromsoftware/Hidetaka Miyazaki’s critically-acclaimed Bloodborne videogame!
The City of Yarnham is buried in snow.
Eileen the Crow buries the Hunters. But one eludes her. Poisoned and overcome with beastly senses, he prowls Yarnham causing misery and havoc. Meanwhile the bodies mount, reality shakes, and strange things are amiss in Byrgenwerth. On the hunt for the Hunter, Eileen struggles with her own sanity and the disturbing change that a glimpse beyond reality brings.
Blood and death pervade Yarnham and those who travel in its wake. Follow the quest of Eileen as she looks to uncover the truth of the city, and her most inner turmoil.”
Bloodborne: A Song of Crows will release on August 20th, 2019, with the price being set at $16.99. You can check out the cover of the comic below.
LitRPG is the up and coming new genre in science fiction and fantasy. But where’s a good place to start if it’s something you might be interested in diving into? There are several really good series by various authors out there. There are even a lot of Russian authors who have had their stories translated into English. So here are the best LitRPG books for beginners.
The Land is an interesting tale about a gamer, Richter, who is transferred to another world. The premise is that humans are in fact what would be called Chaos seeds. This is important because it plays a dramatic role in The Land. Being a chaos seed allows the protagonist to have some interesting powers and make choices that are often not available to everyone else. This is because the entire foundation of chaos is free choices. So the protagonist is allowed to make choices where anything can happen. And it in fact often does.
Play to live follows the premise of merging alternate realities. The character is actually terminally ill, but is allowed a second chance to live by essentially downloading himself into a game. This is a fairly common situation in this world and makes it an interesting story as the protagonist and his friends actually end up back in the real world as their player characters. D. Rus is one of the Russian authors and manages to add in a complex battle between nations within the game world in the story.
The Gam3 diverges a bit from most other LitRPGs. Whereas many of them are set in fantastical worlds where knights and magic exist, The Gam3 takes place in a science fiction based world. Cosimo does a phenomenal job of making an interesting character with original powers in an interesting world. It follows the tale of a lowly boy working to make money in the game, but he must first pay off his debt to the man who supplied the equipment to get into the game.
As with all genres, there are many more quality books out there to read. The best advice is to get out there and find the ones that interest you personally. I wouldn’t write it off though if you find a few that stink. The subgenre is relatively new and so quality can range widely, especially with the easily available self-publishing we have with digital technology.
In a report by Deadline, a new live-action tv series based off of the Dresden Files book series is in the planning process. Fox 21 has the rights to the story and plans on rebooting it as a tv series. Right now there are very few details in regards to where the studio is planning on taking the show. Fans of the book are excited about the possibility of seeing their favorite series on the small screen.
There was a previous Dresden Files tv series airing in 2007 on the Scifi channel which lasted a single season before being canceled. It is possible that the show will run for more than one season due to its popularity and mass of material. There are a total of fifteen books which combine the elements of a noir detective novel with urban fantasy. Dresden Files is not the first series to combine these elements. But it has had success in the literature industry and easily made the transition to the small screen once before.
Fans had long wanted a Netflix adaption. An unknown employee of Frederator Studios, which contracted Powerhouse Animation, looked into doing an anime adaption similar to the Castlevania.
Fans reached out to the minds behind the animated Castlevania series hoping to see Harry Dresden return tot he screen in some form. The Castlevania Anime on Netflix had seen widespread success since its creation in 2017. Fans thought that perhaps the Dresden Files could do well as an animated series. Unfortunately for Frederator and Powerhouse Creative, it seems that Fox21 beat them to the punch. Although the details of the series are few, fans can expect updates in the near future.
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