The Necromancer's House

This week I read The Necromancer's House by Christopher Buehlman. I picked this book up because of the title. I love books about the supernatural and after reading the description inside the jacket, I was hooked.

From the jacket: Andrew Ranulf Blankenship is a handsome, stylish nonconformist with wry wit, a classic Mustang and a massive library. He is also a recovering alcoholic and a practicing warlock, able to speak with the dead through film.

Opening lines from the Prologue: The old man walks from the cabin to the porch behind, palming his whiskey glass from the bottom and swirling the ice in it.

Our protagonist is Andrew Blankenship, a male witch who prefers the term magus to witch. He lives in Dog Neck Harbor in a house hidden by magic from most people. The house is also protected with charms, booby traps, against people who would seek to harm him. We don't find out Andrew's full story and history at once. It's fed to us throughout the novel like special treats. Eventually, we find out why his house is hidden and filled with traps.

Andrew is a recovering alcoholic and regularly attends AA meetings. Andrew's friend Anneke also attends AA meetings. She is luminous, a term used to describe those who have magic within them. Andrew is trying to teach her how to tap into her luminosity. Things start to go bad for Andrew when his rusalka (a mermaid) drowns one of his neighbors, an old Russian man, with connections to the past Andrew doesn't want to remember, (hint: Baba Yaga is involved).

The Necromancer's House is a well-written novel with fully fleshed-out characters. Buehlman has even brought to life minor characters that another author would have left one-dimensional. His writing style leans toward the flowery, which isn't a real criticism, though I did have to re-read a few sentences a second time to pick up the meaning. All-in-all, an excellent read.

I'm linking up to:
Literary Friday at Art @ Home
Book Beginnings at Rose City Reader


Thanks so much for your visit!
~Michelle

A Supernatural TV Season

I love the supernatural and this TV season seems to have a plethora of shows dedicated to the genre. The following are my returning favorites and a couple of new ones that I'll be watching.

Jensen Ackles as Dean Winchester

One of my all-time favorite shows is Supernatural. This show is about the Winchester brothers who hunt down, fight and kill things like demons, shapeshifters, bad witches and ghosts.

Season 9 premiered last Tuesday night on The CW. Sam Winchester is played by Jared Padelecki (on the hospital bed) and Dean Winchester is played by Jensen Ackles. These brothers fight, argue, namecall and play jokes on each other. Their great on-screen chemistry is what's kept the show on for all these years.

Another show returning this fall is Grimm, October 25 on NBC. Nick Burkhardt (David Giuntoli) is a homicide detective in Portland, Oregon, who discovers that he's a descendant in a long line of Grimms.

A Grimm is a hunter of mythological creatures known as Wesen. Nick only hunts down the Wesen who do bad things to humans. Wesen look like humans until they morph into their supernatural being. However, since Nick is a Grimm, he can see the Wesen even when they are in their human form. Nick is helped out by Monroe, a Wesen blutbad, kind of like a werewolf, played by Silas Weir Mitchell.
 

Nick's girlfriend, Juliette, is played by Bitsie Tulloch and Nick's partner is Hank (Russell Hornsby). Other cast include: Captain Sean Renard (Sasha Roiz) also a Wesen; Sgt Wu (Reggie Lee); and Bree Turner plays Rosalee, Monroe's love interest. Season One focused mostly on Nick, whereas Season Two became more of an ensemble drama. There were a few times in S2, where I wished the focus would be more on Nick as there were too many little storylines running through the main story. Hopefully, this'll be corrected in Season Three.

American Horror Story: Coven is the third season for this great show. Each season is a different story . Season 1 concerned homeowners in a haunted house in California and Season 2 took place inside an asylum.

In Coven, Jessica Lange plays a Supreme, which is a very powerful witch and Sarah Paulson is her daughter, running a school for young witches in New Orleans. Joining the cast this season are Kathy Bates, Emma Roberts, and Angela Bassett.

 

The Witches of East End premiered last Sunday night on Lifetime. Joanna, a witch, has raised her two daughters, Ingrid and Freya as normal humans, instead of witches. Her sister comes to town to warn her about an evil doer posing as Joanna. Of course, her daughters then find out that they are indeed witches.

The main characters are all likeable and each set of sisters are believabe as such. Joanna is played by Julia Ormond and her sister, Wendy, is played by Madchen Amick. Joanna's daughters are Ingrid (Rachel Boston) and Freya (Jenna Dewan Tatum (wife of Channing Tatum)).

Another new show is Sleepy Hollow on Fox. At first, I didn't want to watch this show because I love the Johnny Depp movie so much. How could anyone play Ichabod as good as Johnny, right?

 

Well, so far, British actor Tom Mison is doing a great job. Ichabod Crane is fighting the Headless Horseman and the next thing he knows, he wakes up in 2013 Sleepy Hollow. Unfortunately, the Hessian also arrives in 2013. In this updated version, he's now one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. I'm not really fond of this idea, but hey, it's good TV and I find that I'm willing to suspend my disbelief for this weekly show.

 Ichabod's sidekick is Abbie, a deptuy sheriff played by Nicole Beharie. Beharie and Mison play off each other perfectly. Katia Winter is Katrina (Ichabod's wife) and Orlando Jones is Captain Frank Irving, Abbie's boss.

Katia Winter, Tom Mison, Nicole Beharie and Orlando Jones

Dracula will premiere next Friday night on NBC with Jonathan Rhys Meyers taking up the cape. I'm torn on this show-- to watch or not to watch? The advertisements look really good, but vampires really, really scare me. Silly me, right? I know they don't exist, but sometimes my mind likes to play the "what if" game when I'm outside at night.

By the time I was twelve, I'd watched every vampire movie, make that every horror movie, ever made. When I was around ten, I'd take my pencils, rubberband them together into crosses and strategically place them around my bedroom each night. This way, if a vampire crawled up the side of my house, he wouldn't be able to get me. Luckily, that only lasted a year or two. However, not sleeping with a window open, or even allowing a window open after dark, lasted into my mid-twenties.

Synopsis from NBC:  Golden Globe winner Jonathan Rhys Meyers ("The Tudors") stars in this provocative new drama as one of the world's most iconic characters. It's the late 19th century, and the mysterious Dracula has arrived in London, posing as an American entrepreneur , who wants to bring modern science to Victorian society. He's especially interested in the new technology of electricity, which promises to brighten the night - useful for someone who avoids the sun. But he has another reason for his travels: he hopes to take revenge on those who cursed him with immortality centuries earlier. Everything seems to be going according to plan... until he becomes infatuated with a woman who appears to be a reincarnation of his dead wife. From the producers of the critically acclaimed, Emmy Award-winning hit "Downton Abbey" comes "Dracula," a twisted, sophisticated and sexy take on Bram Stoker's classic novel, proving that some stories never die.


 Thanks for your visit today!
~Michelle