I Saw...The Green Hornet

Well, through good fortune and my wife's ability to find free stuff online, we got a chance to see The Green Hornet tonight, before it opened to the general public, in 3D no less.  I'd never been to one of these early premieres, but it's actually pretty intense security.  No cell phones or other recording devices allowed in (lest it show up on The Pirate Bay a full two hours before it is actually released...egad).  They were even wanding people with a metal detector.  So no bootleg footage...but they didn't say anything about no wordsmithin'!  So I thought I'd review it before the release date, just like the professional cynical critics out there!

So, you're asking in a now-bored inner voice, how was it?  Fun, but definitely a mixed bag.

Book Review of "Eldren: The Book of the Dark" (William Meikle)

Eldren: The Book of the Dark  (William Meikle)

In this modern age of sparkly, lovesick vampires who just want to assimilate with the human population and/or subsist on bottled synthetic blood (serve at 98.6 F for optimum flavor!), it is sometimes oddly refreshing to turn back to earlier perceptions.  The vampires in William Meikle’s Eldren: The Book of the Dark have no such effete ambitions—they simply wish to feed and multiply the old fashioned way.

Meikle does a very good job of generating a brisk story, set in the downtrodden Scottish town of Finsburgh in the present day, with a biblically inspired mythological origin for the vampire race.  The titular book is scriptural account of God’s creation of the vampire race—the Eldren—and the trials and tribulations that have led them to their current status as creatures of the night consumed by a thirst for blood.  The town is in for more than economic trouble when a young boy unwittingly awakens one of the most powerful of the Eldren, imprisoned in a forgotten cellar for hundreds of years.  Soon the whole town becomes a hunting ground, and not just for blood.  Meikle’s vampires multiply in the way that used to be standard in these stories…simply by biting, a victim is in danger of being turned.  This is actually an interesting plot device that adds the element of the ticking clock to the action.  The heroes must stop the evil before the entire town is consumed by the thirst that shows no distinction between man, woman, or child.