Season 2 of Carnival Row rushed through a plot about revolution that was oh so conservative in outlook. The revolutionaries were Stalinesque monsters mixed with terrorists; the one protagonist failed completely to see how much their leader was lying to her face; the revolutionaries just gave up and went home after their one tough monster thing got killed; and then years later things were so much better for the formerly oppressed fay folk with no indication at all how that was possible. Oh and the asshole cop captain guy somehow gets redeemed. One wonders if at the end they knew they weren't getting more episodes so they just quickly wrapped everything up.
I keep watching it, but season 3 of Star Trek: Picard feels like just an exercise in how to work as many old characters as possible into a plotline. Every episode has at least one sudden reveal of a familiar face now more aged. At this point pretty much all the actors who were in a lot of the TNG series episodes have shown except a few that were in last season. (Oops I see I already commented on this a few weeks ago, it's only gotten worse.) Each character has one little thing about them that's new, there's a scene of everyone greeting each other, and there are some exchanged quips. Then back to the plot. It's a reunion show in the form of a tv season.
Gave up on another fantasy novel. It was doing that thing I hate in fantasy novels where the author over explains stuff. To me it's like the difference between narrating to an outsider and narrating to someone who lives in the same world. With the former you get info dumps and too obvious explanations of everything, with the later you slowly have to infer the events in what to me feels a more natural way. The former method also tends to lead to worse writing because its so focused on explaining things. It's like novel as rpg guidebook.
Also gave up on John Crowley's latest Flint & Mirror, which I picked up at the bookstore last weekend, it was fine, but... just fine. I wasn't invested in it at all.
Lucked out at the used bookstore on a few almost brand new Balzac novels for later.
Started in on Dickens' Our Mutual Friend which I read many many years ago and have no recollection of. So far so good. There's a great at a dinner where he describes all the characters at the table via one of them looking in the big mirror that hangs on the wall. All these sentences that start: "Reflects..." then something about one of the guests.
