On the Verge of Lunacy

Most anime feature a prodigy destined for greatness. The series would then follow the exploits of that character to his or her final quest. Yet most of those characters start off weak and in desperate need of a mentor, friends (who at first were enemies) and perhaps even a love interest who will inspire him or her to do great things. Ryoma Echizen is a tennis prodigy, but he certainly does not start off as a weakling who needs practice and experience badly. Unlike most characters of his type too, he is not loud, obnoxious and someone you could easily make fun of. For those qualities alone, I consider Prince of Tennis the best anime I have seen to date. The 42-volume manga was created by Takeshi Konomi. His work inspired a 178-episode TV series, animated and live-action movies, musicals (Tenimyu), more than a hundred songs, radio drama (Rajipuri) and video games. Whoever thought that a sport such a tennis that involves almost no physical contact with opponents and fast matches can...

This 1972 science-fiction novel was one of Dean Koontz's earliest works. This book explores the facets of the human mind, its desires, hopes and and its quest for meaning and purpose. The book is divided into four parts: Divinity Destroyed, Humanity Restored, The Incomplete Creation and Man As God. The protagonist Simeon Kelly is one of the two successful products of Artificial Creation. He has the ability to probe the minds of other people. One day he was asked by AC to explore Child's mind, another creation of AC, to unlock the missing information needed to create the shields that will be used for the pending world crisis. Child, the first supergenius ever created, has been withholding important information from Morsfagen and the rest of AC. Simeon's tour of Child's mind takes him into strange worlds and forced him to think and reshape his view of things. Different though they were, he realized that they were both looking for meaning and purpose in their lives b...

Once again Dean Koontz has shown that even a life full of despair does not necessarily create a broken, hopeless soul. Micky Bellsong's life was forever changed by one girl she met one day at her Aunt Geneva's house. Like Micky, Leilani Klonk lived with terror all her life but she was able to cope better than Micky did. What sounded at first as some sort of joke turned out to be the grim story of Leilani's life. Leilani is trapped in a strange family. A stepfather who allegedly killed several people and a mother who calls herself Sinsemilla and who's always high on drugs and self-delusion. He also told Micky about Preston's, her stepfather, belief on aliens and their power to heal deformities. Her brother Lukipela was taken by Preston to the said aliens and was never seen since. As Leilani's 10th birthday approaches, her fated meeting with aliens draws near. She fears that Preston killed her brother and that he would do the same to her. Meanwhile, a boy t...

"Within every chaos, is an eerie order waiting to be revealed. " ~ Lamar Woolsey, chapter 44 This tale of hope amidst the challenge of the unknown and the threats of humanity's capability for cruelty and destruction can be considered as one of Dean Koontz's masterpieces. The plot is no different from most of Koontz's books involving science fiction and suspense and yet he still doesn't fail to surprise me. The book is divided into three parts. The first is called Life and Death in which he introduces the main characters of the story: Grady Adams, Merlin the dog, Camillia Rivers, Lamar Woolsey, Tom Bigger and Henry Rouvroy. How these characters will affect each other was not clear until the final few chapters of the book. Henry was more like a distraction from the main story although it seemed like he will have a huge impact on the lives of the other characters. Tom Bigger also did not have anything to do with the characters I mentioned but his experience,...

Below is the link to my deviantArt. It's a drawing of Fiddler, a character from the Malazan series. http://fav.me/d42glms

The Malazan series ends with unexpected twists, surprising revelations and heartbreaking deaths. The Crippled God picks up from where the stories in Dust of Dreams left off. It has two main stories: one, the mission to free the Crippled God, and the fight to save Kharkanas. It also included points-of-view from the Forkrul Assail, Tiste Liosan, Korabas, and Kaminsod - the Crippled God. The Bonehunters continue their march through the Glass Desert and eventually met the Snake, which until after the meeting was a mysterious player in the overall story. Meanwhile, the Shake fight on for Kharkanas. Their determination humbled the Tiste Andii, who have at last come home. Although at first it seems that this has no connection to the Crippled God, it was later revealed that there was some of of alliance between the K'Chain Nah'ruk, Liosan and Assail. Paran and the rest of Paran's Host also appear in this book. Recall that in Toll the Hounds Picker tried to contact Ganoes...

So far I've done a few reviews of some anime, books and video games. I'll be writing more reviews of my favorite anime series in the next few weeks as well as the novellas from the Malazan Book of the Fallen series. I'll be rereading some of Dean Koontz's works too. Most of what I've reviewed so far I have watched/read/played in the past 3-4 years. I'll be including some series that I've recently finished too. Things to do: 1. A four-part review of Prince of Tennis. 2. Top Ten lists of anything from the Malazan series. 3. Reviews of my favorite books by Dean Koontz. 4. Summary of some mythology and folklore books I'm going to read.