Since more than a year now I was waiting for the successor of the first three episode long season of Sherlock. Always having been a fan of the stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, this new version of the detective and his fellow Dr. Watson brings this great brain to modern ages. Well, I am aware of the new movies on the old Sherlock Holmes, and they are surely nicely done films. But this british series Sherlock with Cumberbatch and Freeman does much more to me.
So on January 1st, the first episode of three of the second season, A Scandal in Belgravia (obviously a reference on the first story about Holmes) ran on BBC, and it’s simply delicious to watch. It really starts fast off with where the last episode ended (with a rather startling solution to Moriarty and Holmes departing from the pool scene) and goes into rapid fragments on cases too boring for the master mind. Including some more plays on old (original) Holmes’ cases like The Geek Interpreter and The speckled Blonde, one can partially read about on Watson’s blog (which is quite a read in itself).
After that little foreplay, they are forced into a case involving some woman named Irene Adler (yes, they took her name into it as well) who somehow seemed to make Holmes fail on drawing conclusions in the first. Of course, acompanied by some tiny bits of action, everything turned back to his brillant brain and the case gets (kind of) solved. Slowing down a bit, the audiance is put back to a quite relaxed mind, when suddenly the story picks up speed again and comes to its final conclusion. Of course, spread all over the show are Cumberbatch’s well played rapid deduction scenes, may they be on solving a case of someone dying in the midth of nowhere or coming out as playing badly on a female co-worker of his.
I loved this episode with all its twists and references to Conan Doyles’ originals, even the episode is quite a modern re-designed story of A Scandal in Bohemia in it’s beginning, it turned out to be more than that, up the the final where Mycroft and Watson are trying to deceive Sherlock about Irene Adler’s death.
All thumbs up, even my big toes. Oh, can’t wait for the next episode and also for MorganFreeman playing The Hobbit.
Eschbach ist sicherlich einer der bekannteren Namen in der deutschen Science-Fiction Szene, spätestens seit der Verfilmung von Das Jesus Video. Als mich wieder die Lust auf einen Science-Fiction überkam, war es zufälligerweise Die Haarteppichknüpfer auf das meine Wahl fiel.
Ich hatte Mørcks ersten Fall von Jussi Adler-Olsen bereits im Kurzreview, nun also der dritte Roman des Sonderdezernats Q namens Erlösung. Warum gleich der dritte? Nun, der zweite Roman, Schändung, bot für mich nicht einmal im Ansatz gute Unterhaltung. Eine platte und haarsträubende Erzählung, die sich an Gewalttaten ergötzte und in der Mørck und sein Team eher Alibi-Funktion hatte, um das alles in Szene zu setzen. Extrem vorhersehbar zudem.
Well, I am not big in physics or astronomy, but from time to time I like to have a read in popular science books. So I did with Stephen Hawking’s The Grand Design. I already liked it’s predecessor A Brief History of Time, and the new book picks up the points made and takes them further into current research. From the writing I assume that the co-author Leonard Mlodinow, also well known as writer for several television fiction series, had quite some hands into it, as it reads very humorous and story-like in parts. Of course, I only understood at most half of what they explained in detail, but one does not have to have a degree in physics to get the picture. I really enjoyed the examples that made the theories graspable, although it seemed a little easy as conclusion to say that there is not one but a multiverse of theories who together make the universal one. I’d rather say it’s still too early in the age of mankind to conclude about all this. Well, an amazing read to me and quite a recommendation to anyone having a little interest in scientific theories.
War ich beim ersten Roman von den vielen Ideen begeistert, so geht es mit Vilm, Die Eingeborenen nicht nur was geistreiche Einfälle betrifft weiter, sondern insbesondere in Hinblick auf den roten Faden und der Form eines durchgängigen Romans vorwärts. Im zweiten Teil löst Karsten Kruschel glücklicherweise einige der offenen Enden aus Vilm 1 auf und verbindet sie sehr klever mit den “Rettungsversuchen”, die den evakuierungsunwilligen Vilmern aufgezwungen werden sollen. Auch die im ersten Roman angedeutete (geistige) Symbiose der Vilmgeborenen wird hier prosaisch ausgelebt und es werden sowohl die Vorteile wie auch Folgen daraus klar. Zahlreiche neue Völker werden eingeführt und mit ihnen eine politische Ebene, in der es vor gegensätzlichen Ansichten und Lebensweisen nur so 
Zwischen all den Thrillern und Krimis stehen immer mal wieder gerne Science-Fictions auf meinem Romane-Menü. Zu den absolut abgefahrensten und einfallsreichsten zähle ich Uwe Posts Symbiose. Darin wird ein unglaublicher Handlungsbogen, von einem automatischen “Pingpingping im Geldbeutel” bis zu einem die Erde fressen wollenden Weltraumfisch, an einem harmlosen Allerweltsmenschen aufgezogen.
Bekannt wurde er duch seinen Riesenerfolg Der Schwarm, mit Tod und Teufel hielt ich jedoch einen seiner ersten und dazu noch historischen Roman von Frank Schätzing in den Händen. Eigentlich sogar eher ein historischer Kriminalroman, denn es geht um einen Mord und einen Dieb, der notgedrungen zum Ermittler wird.
This was rather an accidental find when talking to a friend about Robert Wilson, until it turned out we were talking about different people. He refered to Robert Charles Wilson, an author of science fiction novels. So later on I ordered a book of his, Blind Lake. I must say it is really well written and also had a nice idea. But… well, the novel turned out to be rather longish and the story is closer to a fiction soap than thrilling science. Especially, as a regular scifi reader, the core idea is soon known and fleshed out, while the book has so many more pages, overall going on over a love plot that ends as expected, too.
Sometimes blurbs do a fantastic job to a book, even if the real story is rather flat and turn out to be longish but boring. May be it’s the plot of John Saul’s Black Lightning, which has been told many times already. Right after the first chapter I was fairly sure how the book is going to end. I must admit, that Saul’s writing is good and it reads quite easy, so after some more chapters I was of hope that the book would surprise me and give an unexpected turn. Not so.