My recap of last weekend’s Kings is up at Tor.com, and I turned up the snark, because this show, for all its promise, has made the same missteps so repeatedly that I can no longer pretend it was just part of a growing narrative.

Firstly, David and Michelle. Apart, they’re boring. Together, they’re a level of boring that’s equivalent to a concussion. And it’s not enough that they’re infesting the present – they infested the flashbacks!

Worst of all, the flashback had Michelle almost die, AND THEN GETS BETTER.

Wrong, show. WRONG WRONG WRONG. Don’t tease me with something so great when I already know it doesn’t come true.

The only good thing about that entire subplot was watching two more kickass women run things: Queen Rose, and DEATH. HELL YES, SAFFRON BURROWS. YOU GET IT, GIRL. (Sorry, I’m always just so excited for her when she’s not in a movie about sharks.)

Also, as someone who routinely drops exposition three-quarters of the way through the story, these flashbacks still made me cringe, not because they introduced new information, but because the crux of why Silas is reacting to David the way he is lies in these flashbacks, which means that everything else he’s done about David for seven episodes is a song-and-dance routine that stems from a reveal that’s not even necessary, since we saw in the pilot that God favored David to be king. It’s not as if Silas is suddenly like, “Oh, shit, THAT guy?”

Though he should be, because holy mother, THAT guy?

I am not the biggest Bond fan in the world. When he’s not a cardboard cutout in a tux, he’s a suave-slash-vicious example of British imperialist blahblah. Even as a kid I couldn’t see the appeal; Bond rarely entertained, the women rarely lived. I caught a couple of the Pierce Brosnan ones, and I like Daniel Craig in the role (though I still haven’t seen the latest one he’s in), so my cultural awareness of James Bond is more or less a vague impression of guns and boat chases and Timothy Dalton scrunching up his face all the time like he’d just smelled poop. Also, because his girlfriend was probably dead.

All this to say, I was totally unprepared to be surfing channels and to run across Live and Let Die. I couldn’t bring myself to turn it off, because I kept waiting for a punch line that never came, and then it was over.

And you guys, we need to talk.

You know, let’s just begin with the title card.

Yeah. So, that happens!

You think it can’t get ironically better / actually worse? Aren’t you sweet.
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The TOC for Jabberwocky 4 has just been released! I’m there with “How to Write a Sad Song,” and in excellent company, including friends-list-haunters, as well as freakin’ P.B. Shelley, who’s too cool to get an LJ, I guess. Ten bucks says he has a secret Twitter account that’s nothing but Jonas Brothers fanwank. He’s such a poser.

Anyway, nobody likes a crazy-long list, so you can check out the full TOC here if so inclined.

“If you leave meat on the bone in lukewarm water long enough, the pores will leak marrow. No matter how gamey the meat, the bath in its milky marrow-water will soften it and give it flavor. It’s a poor man’s trick.

You know the meat is ready when you can peel the bone out of the meat and grind it to powder under your fingers.”

My short story “To Set Before the King” will be coming out this fall as part of the Interfictions 2 Online Annex. Like last year, the IAF is running an online auction of portable art based on the stories to benefit the IAF. There were some really gorgeous items inspired by the stories in the anthology last year.

This year’s Call to Artists is live. You can see snippets from all the stories (just keep refreshing – it’s like the slots!), including a longer snippet from mine, and request the full story if an excerpt strikes your fancy.

For anyone who might be interested, “To Set Before the King” follows three stories: a young nanny in a house where the mother has just gone missing, the fairy tale from the children’s collection, and advice from the house chef on how to cook large cuts of meat. (Hint: take the wedding ring off first.)

Who doesn’t want a nice sweet story, right? Hit up that Call to Artists for something you can read to your children. If you want them to hate you forever.

Today at Tor.com, I talk about Moon, which I had hailed in previous posts there as my last best hope for some cerebral science fiction in the next eon.

For once, something did not disappoint!

It’s a movie that doesn’t tell you everything; it shows you as much as it can, and you decide what you want to take away from it. It sounds laissez-faire, but I was totally hooked from the first minute (and pay attention in the quiet first act – you’ll be rewarded later).

Oh, and bring a tissue; Clint Mansell did the score, and anyone who saw Requiem for a Dream knows what happens when you give that guy three minutes and some instruments. I might have cried. Twice. You can’t prove a thing.