I am so dumb.

So last night I finished both Son of Neptune and 100 Cupboards. This coupled with the battle of wills getting my spawn to finish her homework resulted in me not getting to bed until 11:30-ish. So far this morning I've flaked on loading the dishwasher and left my messenger bag (aka man purse) at home with my work's security badge. I had to wait about ten minutes until someone else got to work so I could sort of sneak in behind them. I am such a security rebel.

And my head is nearly killing me. It's like there's this big time head ache just sitting there saying, "I could so take you right now" but so far it hasn't. Today aught to be really interesting. One large coffee down and I think I'll move to tea now.

In addition I have a couple of reviews brewing in my head for Son of Neptune and the second issue of Batwoman. I may write them up later.

Wonderful ideas about creativity and working with your muse

Elizabeth Gilbert: A new way to think about creativity. It's long, nearly 20 minutes but very worth the time, especially starting around 12-13 minutes.

Reviews

Okay as usual, your mileage may vary.

Batwoman 02. Art is still gorgeous but this issue left me wanting more. I think it had to do with the page break down, out of the 24 pages of content nearly half of them were splash pages (9 total). I love me a good splash page. They are wonderful for setting up a potent scene or showing off a lot of action or capturing the big picture but these were almost all dialog. The only fight in this issue was in the first few pages and only filled two of the splash pages. Not much progress was made of the investigation Kate is involved in (I don't want to go into specifics) and really there was only one splash page I really liked which was when a police investigator was examining the scene of a gang war. As she talked about the evidence and tracked the action, the splash page showed what happened in the past. This was really well done but could have been less confusing if the action was faded back or some such as the real time investigators were drawn walking in the middle of the gang fight and the coloring was all the same. Two bats out of five.

Son of Neptune
A good sequel to Lost Hero but I fear Riordon's story formula is showing. I think this is what started bugging me about the PJ&tO books. I love the characters and all, don't get me wrong but it would be nice to have the plot mixed up a bit. The battle in the first chapter leading to personal conflicts at school/camp to quest to one week to solve quest to final battle to resolution can be mixed up a bit and still work. I do like how he continued changing the voice of the narrative as he did in Lost Hero and I liked that Percy wasn't the keystone of the final battle of the quest and the new characters got to shine. Characterization as always was marvelous and I can't wait for the next book. Three out of five eagles (but really close to four out of five).