Dragons: Race to the Edge Season 3

So I finally got around to watching the latest season of the “How to Train Your Dragon” tv show on Netflix. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, go look this up now because it’s amazing!) Sure the animation and the writing is nowhere near as good as the movies, but the animation’s not bad and it features the characters we know and love. It’s also so much funnier than the movies, and since the movies span a lot of time with not a lot of room, you get a more in depth look at the characters this way.

For instance, are you wondering how Gobber got his dragon that’s in the second film? Or for that matter, why he would pick such a lazy looking dragon? That’s shown this season. It’s a great glimpse into what everyone is up to in between the two films currently out.

There were some ups and downs this season. I thought that the Dagur storyline was really good and was going to go great places… Until they cut that short. I wasn’t very happy with the way that it was resolved, it just seemed a little too convenient for everyone involved.

And then there’s the Heather arc that just keeps going. Personally, I don’t see why the characters like Heather, other than the fact that she’s another female who can relate to Astrid more. There isn’t anything wrong with that, but having a character hanging around that we aren’t given a reason to like is just plain weird. She just seems to be used whenever the writers want there to be another spy in the gang’s camp and then discarded and then they try to build her up again. Honestly, if you’re going to make her a big player in this series (which seems like where they’re going with this) then she deserves a better background and more convincing motivations! Granted, this season was better than others, no betrayal or anything, but I’ll be more confident that this is a character headed in a good direction if they keep it up next season.

In the past, the Netflix show has been a lot better about its portrayals of the female characters than the earlier Cartoon Network show, especially Astrid. Like I said, I’m not super into Heather, and Ruffnut mostly just plays off Tuffnut (I said “plays off” she hardly gets any of her own jokes). Astrid this season left a little to be desired. She is a major player in the gang, often second in command to Hiccup, but more often than not she’s just that. We don’t see any other side of her. There was that one episode where she sets up the auxiliary fighters back on Berk, but other than that it’s just Astrid doing work, or getting hurt and insisting that she’s fine. And then there was an episode where Astrid gets this rare disease (I’ll just let book fans know, it’s not cured by the vegetable that doesn’t exist aka the potato, I know I was disappointed too) and Hiccup has to save her. Alternatively, when any of the rest of the gang gets in trouble, they manage to think their way out of it. Humph.

Having said all that, Heather and Astrid together are often shown to be the strong, dependable backup for the rest of the crew, especially Fishlegs and Snotlout. They’re the ones who save Fishlegs and the twins at the dragon auction, so I’m hoping that with these two ladies together there will be more of a feminist slant to the show.

The rest of that aside, this show is hilarious. Tuffnut and Ruffnut (mostly Tuffnut) have some great lines, and the chicken is still here and very much present. While the writing plot-wise isn’t top notch, the humor is spot-on with plenty of puns and really clever recurring jokes. I’m kind of ok watching it just for that.

And then there’s the ending. Again, not the most well-written, but it’s such a cliffhanger, in more ways than one. And there is a good idea behind it. You barely see the villain in the final episode, but everything starts unraveling as the episode progresses, making it like a mystery novel in that regard. I can’t wait until next season!

“The Dante Club” by Matthew Pearl

This tale centers around a mystery set in Boston in 1865, and the heroes are a group of literary people such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, and James T. Fields. They are a bunch of nerds doing the first translation of Dante Aligheri’s work “The Inferno” into English. Literally, this is a book about a book club.

While they are working on this, mysterious murders that seem to be inspired by the fates portrayed in “The Inferno” start appearing in the streets of Boston. Guess who gets involved.

Of course, since bookworms love to read about other bookworms going on adventures, this is a story bound to make readers happy. The fact that the characters are wonderfully portrayed doesn’t hurt either. Despite the fact that most of them lived over 100 years ago, they seem to pop off the page and are incredibly vivid. It really brings these old and dusty names to life.

The case itself is also very engaging, and comes to a tight conclusion that brings everything together. The plot is very intricate with a ton of side characters that are just as fleshed out as the main ones, which can be confusing but it works out well in this case. Having said that, there are times where there are too many pronouns and you can’t figure out who is doing what, but I have faith in you.

There was one storyline that was kind of dropped though. In the introduction it discusses this strange species of flies that then gets discussed more in the story. But from there it is just dropped and is never concretely resolved so I don’t know what’s going on there.

So this is a great read if you’re a poetry fan, a history fan, a Dante fan, or just a literary fan. And that seems to cover most people these days.

“A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” by Betty Smith

This is a book about growing up in Brooklyn at the turn of the century. Other than that it doesn’t really have a plot to it.

What I really enjoyed was how all of the characters are described so well! They’re all believable and you can’t help but care about them. Francie I really liked since I could relate to her as a bookworm. Other characters who are clearly looked down on by the community in the book are also done well, like Papa and Sissy. From their portrayal, you like and care about them in a similar way to Francie, despite the fact that they are not beloved by the rest of the world in the book. Lee is also portrayed really well, Smith could have made him seem much nicer from the beginning, but you can kind of sense that he’s a scumbag from the start. Which makes his actions that much more terrible, since you could see it coming. An interesting tactic.

Since the story spans such a big chunk of time, you kind of grow up with Francie, and as details grow fuzzy to her the reader experiences the same phenomenon. Which is pretty cool. Probably doesn’t hold true on the second or third reading, but on the first one it definitely was the case.

The ending itself comes full circle to the beginning which is great, but it also seems like it’s wrapped up just a little too nicely. As though there should have been more to it than that.

Read for the characters, not the plot. But an enjoyable work to get through all the same.

"Harry Potter and the Cursed Child" based on a story by J.K. Rowling but written by Jack Thorne

Alright so this story has gotten a lot of press lately for being, well, another book about Harry Potter, but also many people are saying that it reads like fan-fiction.  And, I mean, duh of course it does. It’s the first book in the Harry Potter universe that’s a play, which is a huge difference just by itself.

Think about it: reading a book is really an experience. You get sucked into the place and feel like you’re with the characters on their adventures. Plays aren’t like that. They can be if you’re in the theatre, sure, but if you’re just reading them they definitely are not. And it’s hard to bridge that gap between the two, to write a play that feels like a novel. So the entire experience around reading this book is going to be entirely different than anything else in the Harry Potter universe.

And then there’s the fact that the characters we know and love have grown up. Now I consider J.K. Rowling to be a wonderful writer and an incredible creator of this universe. Since she is trying to make these characters believable, she made caused them to change slightly over the years. They are no longer the scruffy gang that we once knew, now Harry, Ron, and Hermione are parents and adults with actual jobs that don’t involve getting into tons of trouble all the time. They do not seem the same as their characters in the main series, nor would I want them to if I’m being honest.

But therein lies the rub, the whole reason why people loved the Harry Potter books so much was because of the characters and the world around them. Now that all of that has changed, there is not much left of the original story that we all know and love.

Don’t get me wrong, the writing leaves a little to be desired and the plot is somewhat cliché (although it does get better in part 2). I am pretty far from claiming that this is anywhere near as good as the original books.

But maybe we aren’t giving it enough of a chance, none of us has seen the play performed and the difference between seeing it live and reading it is huge. Within the theatre you can also get “sucked in” to the story and the characters, similar to reading a book.

So don’t completely give up on this play, you probably just aren’t experiencing it in the right way.