Book Review: R.I.P.D. by Peter Lenkov

Once again, this was a graphic novel I had never heard of until the movie came out - same as my experience with Hellboy and Men in Black.  In the case of R.I.P.D., I recognized the flavor of the material and suspected it was based on a comic, and a quick search confirmed that.  The trailer for the film looked interesting and amusing (the scene of James Hong using a banana as a gun made me smile, and I typically like Jeff Bridges and Ryan Reynolds), but then it got really bad reviews from critics.  Reviews similar to The League of Extraordinary Gentleman and I lost interest in seeing it.  But, I was interested in its origins as a comic, so I hunted around for it.  It was very difficult to find in hard copy, and after a while I gave up - it wasn't available anywhere.  I recently came across it as a Kindle offering and checked it out.

So, what did I think of it after spending some time hunting for it several years ago?  Well, on the surface, it is a very similar story to the one told in the movie Men in Black.  An older agent who will be retiring soon starts training a new agent to protect the Earth.  Whereas the "Men in Black" are human agents who operate above the law using alien technology to protect Earth from bad aliens, the Rest In Peace Department are law enforcement men who have died and work for Heaven, protecting Earth from demons from hell and their human recruits - apparently they serve for 100 years and then can move on.  Heaven, and the R.I.P.D. is represented in a fashion similar to that of the Albert Brook's film Defending Your Life.  Essentially, it is a lot like Earth - there are offices, people stand in lines, etc.

I found this story to be readable, but rather ordinary and seemingly mediocre after seeing the films for Hellboy and Men in Black.  (IMO the Hellboy film was more entertaining than the graphic novel, and definitely contained much more humor - can't speak to Men in Black, since I haven't read the comic material, and I can't speak to the R.I.P.D. film because I haven't seen it yet.)

It was interesting that Satan makes an appearance in the story, but even that was relatively uneventful.  And, no, the Head Honcho of Heaven does NOT put in appearance (this is pretty consistent with most works that involve Hell and Satan - in fact, deceased humans appear to be the only population in heaven; I don't recall any Angels).  Overall, I didn't find this story to be very engaging, and while there were a few original ideas, ultimately it wasn't enough to keep this story from being underwhelming for me.  Perhaps I've seen and read too much  that was similar to this story?

Despite all of this, reading this book has at least given me a desire to see the film, as bad as it may be.  It looks like they added a new wrinkle to the story in the film - the men who work for the R.I.P.D. do not exist in their own bodies.  Jeff Bridges appears as a blond bombshell, and Ryan Reynolds appears as the elderly James Hong - seems like a recipe for humor to me, which I felt was rather absent from the graphic novel.  Perhaps the film will be similar to The League of Extraordinary Gentleman - mostly awful with a few redeeming and entertaining elements?  I have the R.I.P.D. film set up to record, so hopefully I'll be finding out at some point soon.

Book Review: Fluency, by Jennifer Foehner Wells

This is another book that I came across due to the new Prime reading program on Amazon.  I initially had mixed feelings about it.  First, I was excited, because the theme is one that I really enjoy:  First Contact.  In the 1960's, NASA detects an alien ship in the asteroid belt.  After decades of observation, a mission is sent to attempt to bring the ship back to Earth.  The trip itself is not part of the story - it starts off with the ship Providence approaching the derelict.  There are a few flashbacks to events where the main characters are selected for the mission - in particular, Jane and Alan, and their early interactions, where Alan is an engineer/astronaut from NASA who has been sent to recruit Jane for the mission to the ship, which NASA has been referring to as The Target for many years.  Jane is needed for the mission because she is a world expert on extinct or nearly-extinct language - NASA feels she would have the best chance of deciphering an alien language.  These were all the good expectations.

My hesitancy stemmed from a few things:

• This was an author I was not familiar with.
• There are lots of first contact stories - many of them not very good.
• While this book had many rave reviews, there have been other "free" books available through Prime that had rave reviews, but I didn't think much of (The Galapagos Incident being one of them - lots of boasting about great reviews, but it was kind of slow).
• Several reviews said that this book was a 50/50 split of space adventure and romance.

So, I definitely had some reservations going into this.  While I've read many science fiction stories that contained some intimacy, certainly 50% of the story was not what I would consider to be romance.

From the first sentence, the story pulled me in, and I will say that once the flashback to crew member recruitment started, my concern about the romance aspect started to grow - but that didn't last long.  For me, the relationship that develops between Jane and Alan is not 50% of the story - I felt the level was on par with other things I've read (Robert J. Sawyer's trilogy The Neanderthal Parallax leaps immediately to mind).

For me, this was a really good read.  The derelict ship, and what they find there, was very interesting, and I felt that while there were some elements similar to stories I've read in the past, there was still a good amount of original material here.  It reminded me of several things:

• Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama when I was in college.
• The Infocom text-adventure (yeah, I said "text-adventure") Starcross.
• The novel Saturn Run, by John Sanford, which I read last year.
• The novel The Engines of God, by Jack McDevitt

The ship is filled with interesting technology and dangers, and there are a few nice surprises that I didn't see coming.  There is some new terminology as well, related to the crews experiences on the ship.

Why is the ship here?  Why has the ship been dormant in the asteroid field for decades?  Is the ship empty?

By the end of the book, we get answers to all of these questions, although the story ends somewhat abruptly.  My assumption is that book two picks up precisely where this one leads off, but I'll find out when I get around to reading it.

I'd like to congratulate Jennifer Wells on a job well done.  Not only was the story interesting and well paced, but the writing style keeps the reader engaged.  When I was younger, I remember reading more books like this - books that you just didn't want to put down because you wanted to know what was going to happen next, and the style was very easy to read.  Novels like this are becoming scarce these days.  For example, I enjoyed the first three Game of Thrones novels.  When I got to book four, I spent over 350 pages waiting for something to happen - it just wasn't interesting.

I would suspect that fans of the novels I listed above would enjoy this story.  The romance part is not mushy and actually leads to some interesting moments in the story - I also thought it was fairly realistic.

If you have read this book, whether you enjoyed it or not, I'd like to hear from you.  Please feel free to leave a comment to this review.

Book Review: Hellboy: Seed of Destruction by Mike Mignola

I had never heard of Hellboy when the film was first released in 2004.  But, it took one line in the trailer to hook me - Ron Perlman saying "...skip to the end, how do I kill it?"  I enjoyed this film immensely (the sequel The Golden Army - not so much).  Ron Perlman was perfect for the role, John Hurt was most excellent (when is he not?) as the aged Trevor Broom, Rupert Evans was great as Agent Myers, Jeffrey Tambor was perfect as Tom Manning for the comic relief, and Karel Roden made it all work as Grigori Rasputin (his voice was amazingly perfect for this role as well).

I had no idea that this came from a comic story - although, knowing that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Men in Black, and R.I.P.D. all share this origin, I should have been able to guess the same was true for Hellboy.  I did come across some of the graphic novels a short while after the film came out, but I wasn't very impressed with the look of the content - especially given the price tag for such short books.

Recently, I was able to obtain the first story, The Seed of Destruction (basis for the film) for free via Amazon Prime for Kindle, so I decided to read it - I thought it would be interesting to compare the original work with what I thought was a great film.  I have to agree with sentiments that the film is very loosely based on the graphic novel.  Surprisingly, reading the book is almost like reading a different story.  It is a bit darker and was lacking much of the humor that was in the film, and it didn't really flesh out most of the characters very well (although, I think it may have done a better job of explaining the origin of Abe Sapien than the movie did - the film was confusing for me in this area).  So, for me the film was a superior product.  If I'd read the book first, I would say it was a good starting point which was made much better.

A positive of reading the book is that events in the book clearly scream for resolution, which must be revealed in later volumes, and I will say that I am interested in learning more.  I believe I've heard the elements of at least two later graphic novels were used as base material for the second Hellboy film:  The Golden Army.

All in all, this is a story worth checking out, and I think it will be interesting to see if elements of the film, such as the humor, start to appear in later volumes.  As most are aware, films are typically inferior to the books that they are based on.  For me, this is one of the major exceptions.  The book is ok as a starting point, but the film is vastly superior.

If anyone else has enjoyed the film or read the books, let me know what you think.  Which was better for you?

For those who have enjoyed the first film but have not read the books, here a are a few minor spoilers for the book in a list of differences that I observed.  If you aren't interested - STOP HERE.

<SPOILER SPACE>
<SPOILER SPACE>

<SPOILER SPACE>
<SPOILER SPACE>

<SPOILER SPACE>
<SPOILER SPACE>

<SPOILER SPACE>
<SPOILER SPACE>

<SPOILER SPACE>
<SPOILER SPACE>

<SPOILER SPACE>
<SPOILER SPACE>

<SPOILER SPACE>
<SPOILER SPACE>

<SPOILER SPACE>
<SPOILER SPACE>

<SPOILER SPACE>
<SPOILER SPACE>

<SPOILER SPACE>
<SPOILER SPACE>

<SPOILER SPACE>
<SPOILER SPACE>

<SPOILER SPACE>
<SPOILER SPACE>

<SPOILER SPACE>
<SPOILER SPACE>

<SPOILER SPACE>
<SPOILER SPACE>

<SPOILER SPACE>
<SPOILER SPACE>

<SPOILER SPACE>
<SPOILER SPACE>

<SPOILER SPACE>
<SPOILER SPACE>

<SPOILER SPACE>
<SPOILER SPACE>

<SPOILER SPACE>
<SPOILER SPACE>

<SPOILER SPACE>
<SPOILER SPACE>

<SPOILER SPACE>
<SPOILER SPACE>

<SPOILER SPACE>
<SPOILER SPACE>

<SPOILER SPACE>
<SPOILER SPACE>

<SPOILER SPACE>
<SPOILER SPACE>

<SPOILER SPACE>
<SPOILER SPACE>

<SPOILER SPACE>
<SPOILER SPACE>

<SPOILER SPACE>
<SPOILER SPACE>

<SPOILER SPACE>
<SPOILER SPACE>

<SPOILER SPACE>
<SPOILER SPACE>

<SPOILER SPACE>
<SPOILER SPACE>

<SPOILER SPACE>
<SPOILER SPACE>

<SPOILER SPACE>
<SPOILER SPACE>

Ok, here's a list of things that I noticed were different from the film.

• Trevor "Broom" Bruttenholm is hardly in the story, and his demise is somewhat different.
• Karl Ruprecht Kroenen is a peripheral character - he is only mentioned and plays no part in the story at all, though he makes an actual appearance at the end.  I thought he was a fantastic edition in the film.  I have no idea how much of an appearance he makes in later Hellboy books.
• Ilsa Haupstein, Rasputin's lover, is also missing from the story, making a minor appearance at the very end.
• Hellboy is ultimately not needed to open the gate and free the Ogdru Jahad - Rasputin is able to use the power from Liz to attempt to accomplish this.
• Sammael is a frog monster, and has none of the powers exhibited in the film - much cooler in the film.
• Liz plays a very small part in the story, and there does not appear to be a relationship between Liz and Hellboy.
• Most of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense is not in the story - certainly not Meyers or Manning (at least, not that I noticed).
• Most importantly, Hellboy does not fight one of the seven Ogdru Jahad (which I believe is what came forth from Rasputin at the end of the film).  In the book, they aren't even released from their prison.

That's about all I remember off the top of my head without referring to the book again.