In the Flesh coming to BBC America

The awesome In the Flesh is coming to BBC America on Saturday the 3^rd August

We mention this because it’s an awesome 3 episode mini series that, when we got to the third episode, was pretty damn stunning to watch. Our recaps:

Episode 1

Episode 2

Episode 3

British people can, of course, still find all 3 episodes BBC IPlayer

Maybe with enough viewing figures, BBC 3 can be convinced to make another series. But then, the more popular it is the more likely it is to be replaced by Embarrassing Teenaged Penis Rashes or some such, it being BBC 3 and all.

Being Human (US) Sneak Peak

It's the season finale this Monday! Here's something to get you ready for it






And to commemorate the long awaited wedding - here's an interview with Sam and Kristen about the wedding scene:

Warehouse 13: Sneak Peak

It's been a terrible long wait, and we still have to hold on until 29th April, but here's a Sneak Peak of the return of Warehouse 13:

Seeker of Fate (Fate Series #2) by L.J. Kentowski

Cassandra has recovered from the grand revelations of the first book, but the shadows still haunt her. Particularly, they haunt her dreams –dreams about Hell and it being a home to her, calling to her demonic blood.

But she has her own reason for going to Hell – her father is still trapped. A demon, but one her mother loved and one she desperately needs back to help her mother deal with the major changes in her life. A demon who turned his back on Hell – especially since Cassie’s blood contains the power to change a demon back to a Guardian.

But the one person who can help her get to Hell is Caleb, the ex-demon she is not sure she can trust, is constantly trying to seduced her and has his own ultimatum – she can rescue her father but Hunter, the man, the demon, she loves must remain in Hell, no matter what tortures he is suffering.

This book, this world has such a gem of potential. The battle to save souls between the tempting and devious demons and the Guardians who, driven by prophetic dreams and visions, try to twist fate back the other way. The grand battle between the angels and the demons to save or recruit souls to fill their armies. It’s both epic and, because the battles are about personal visions, also deeply personal. It’s about a war on a grand scale and

What saddens me is we don’t really see any of the wider world, or this epic struggle or even the daily dealing with the struggle. Instead we focus on Cassandra and her personal aims – which entirely focuses on men. Either a man she loves, a man she’s attracted to, or her father.

I would quite like a story about her rescuing her father for her mother’s sake – but even then I’d appreciate more backstory than we got in the first or this book. Who is her father? Is he important in a grander scale? Is there a reason why we can be sure that he, as a demon, is going to be trustworthy? He is, after all, a demon. It could be more of a driving quest if we had seen more of Cassie’s mother, of how the missing father had affected them both, if we could get a little more of a sense of how important or resonant a mission this is for Cassie

Supernatural, Season 8, Episode 19: Taxi Driver

 Kevin is working for the Winchesters and this annoys Crowley, yes yes it does. He has creative and bloody ways of expressing that annoyance  - including removing all of someone’s limbs. Yes it’s a dream – but still you’ve got to give him kudos.

Dean and Sam arrive at Kevin’s boat, called when Kevin had a rather understandable reaction. Kevin’s worried about Crowley in his head but neither Dean nor Sam are especially worried (considering the things they’ve had in their heads, that’s understandable) particularly since if Crowley knew where Kevin actually was, he’d have more than dreams to worry about. He’s also translated the second trial for closing the gates of Hell – about time! Rescue a soul from Hell and deliver it to Heaven

That sounds a mite more difficult than stabbing a Hellhound.

Deciding they need to figure out how to do this, they summon an expert – a crossroad demon.  Into a demon trap (really, it’s that easy to capture a crossroad demon? You could continually summon them one after another and stab or exorcise them and decimate the ranks of hell like this!) Dean is perturbed that the Crossroad demon is no longer a “hot chick” (typical Dean) I suspect this is because graphic torture is going to happen instigated by the heroes and TV land has tropes for that – they can die tragically after becoming a quasi love interest or otherwise heart-stringy for the Winchesters. Have a disposable Black guy instead.

Yup, holy water torture begins and after some token protests we get the story – Rogue Reapers will smuggle you to Hell, to heaven, just about anywhere, really. The demon then begs for death so that he doesn’t have to go back to Crowley who may be Disappointed In Him. Dean wants a little more info first.

Tim to go see Aajay, the Taxi Driver Reaper Coyote – and he wants a favour for them in payment. How does he know them? Because he was the one who took Bobby’s soul to Hell. Now why would a good guy like Bobby go to Hell? Why because he’s on the King of Hell’s shitlist and he can corrupt the system if he wants. Yeah that was the cannon just screeching and crying.

Anyway, Dean is determined to go as well because Sam is under-the-weather with that whole coughing up blood thing and aside from the trials, Dean isn’t leaving Bobby in Hell. But Sam insists it has to be just him for the sake of the trial – which leads to Sam going for exactly 24 hours. They’re also watched by someone I assume is suspicious since the camera focused on him for some reason.

Some zappy magic and special effect and Sam and Aajay arrive in… Purgatory. Hey, you got lost! Apparently this is a round about route into Hell. He gives Sam directions to a portal, this way he isn’t caught sneaking a Winchester into Hell which could make people Unhappy With Him. he leaves after a quick warning of how dangerous Purgatory is.

Dean, meanwhile, is with Kevin trying to deal with his paranoia. Which he does in his own classic style of “no this doesn’t end, it’s not going to get easier, they don’t get normal lives but they suck it up and move on. Kevin steals his pie. I believe this is karma.

And Aajay gets a visit from the always-awesome Crowley who is so very curious about the deal he made with Sam Winchester. He quickly tells Crowley everything he knows (which isn’t much) and when Sam is due back – followed by getting an Angel Blade through the chest.

In Purgatory, Sam only has to kill one monster before finding the portal into Hell, he goes through and marks the way back with his watch (don’t you need that Sam, since you have to be back for a certain time?).

Hell is pretty hellish - stone corridors with lots of background screaming and crying. There are a lot of people, with horrible torture wounds, imprisoned, chained or caged begging for Sam to help. He finds Bobby pretty easily – which is kind of impressive. Did he get a floor plan or something? And Bobby punches him because he thinks Sam is a demon imposter.

Yes, Bobby is awesome. Not as awesome as Crowley, but still pretty damn awesome. And yes I had a glee moment seeing him back. Sam, quickly tell Bobby some highly embarrassing and secret things only he should know (actually, one of them only Dean should know, oops).

The Death of Marginalised Characters

We talk a lot about how marginalised characters are depicted in our shows and books. How they live their lives, what stereotypes they conform to and, most often of all, how many times they’re completely erased. But one of the most prevalent problems that dogs all marginalised people is not how their characters live - but how they die.

Who dies?

Firstly, they die a lot. Death is something that hits marginalsied characters disproportionately - and that’s especially true in genres where character death is common or expected, like dystopias. We see this time and again on the shows we watch, on Supernatural there’s an enormous number of fridged women, a string of dead POC and half of the very few GBLT people the show has included have died. Warehouse 13 has killed off a Black woman Lena and killed (and resurrected) a gay man, Jinks. Falling Skies, especially in the first season, had an astonishing number of dead POC and do we even have to mention how many POC have died on The Walking Dead? The Vampire Diaries has a host of Black witches who serve the vampires - before dying, and so many random Black people have been devoured that it has become a running joke. I don’t believe American Horror Story ever had POC except to kill them - and while it was a show with a huge death count, the POC didn’t last more than an episode or 2. The violence and death on American Horror Story also disproportionately targets gay people and women.

These are just a few examples - but in most shows where there are character deaths - especially a number of character deaths - it is the marginalised people who are disproportionately on the slab.

Who Survives?

So you minority character has kicked the bucket and joined the choir invisible; the survivors pick up the pieces and start to move on to their next adventure and... what do you know, all the living people are straight, white folks! How shocking is that!?

This is the next problematic element we see so often. Too often in shows with a high death count, it is not just the minorities who disproportionately fill the graveyards, but they start with smaller numbers in the first place.

See, this is where tokenism can be a problem. When you have a nearly entirely majority cast, even one or two deaths among your minority characters can halve their numbers - or wipe out your minorities entirely and, as the death toll mounts, so too does the diversity plummet. When I first started watching the first season of The Walking Dead I was impressed by the number of POC - who then started dying, splitting off from the group and otherwise disappearing until we end up with an increasingly White cast. In the Falling Skies we see the same issue - we started with several POC who were whittled down through the season, even new POC joining the cast killed off until we ended with a far far far Whiter cast.

In extreme cases this can make the enemies seem very targeted in their killing. Increasingly surrounded by dominant characters, the marginalised are still unerringly picked off. And there’s no greater example than shows that simply don’t have more than one or two tokens at all and even they die - wiping out everyone or nearly everyone of their marginalisation - as we saw on Warehouse 13 and Haven.

When faced with this problem, too many shows will introduce a new token. This doesn’t fix the problematic death so much as it underscores it - T-Dog’s death wasn’t made more worthy by Oscar’s introduction, it just emphasised how little T-Dog mattered, how much he was reduced to being just a token inclusion. After the decimation of POC in the first season of Falling Skies, we had a brief introduction of Jamil and Diego before they were both shuffled off.

Blood and Magic (Deacon Chalk #3) by James R Tuck

 

Deacon Chalk can’t even enjoy a quiet dinner out with his friends and loved ones without witches swooping in and ruining the meal.

Witches are a pretty new one to face, especially witches as powerful of these, transforming demon witches, witches that raise the dead and witches that can kill with a word. And they have one target in mind – the Trinity, Sophia’s baby triplets. If they get them, they may have power enough to end the world.

And Deacon Chalk faces conflict in his own inner circle as people close to him try to find their own solutions.

There are elements this book that continue the improvement of the writing style we saw in the second book. It’s cleaner, the descriptions less inclined to be too overwrought and there’s less of the utter melodrama – the writing style is definitely improving.

We’re also having a sense of meta-plot. Not just repeating characters and growing power on Deacon Chalk’s part, but the new connection with the government, Sophia’s 3 mystical children are definitely going to lead to more in the future.

We have a lot of the women growing as well, Sophia is ferocious in defence of her children – yes, an old trope. But we also have Tiff growing into her own, becoming a capable and dangerous hunter in her own right and seeking her own place and own career in monster hunting in her own right. While, naturally, very much under Deacon Chalk’s shadow still – and certainly never in a position to challenge him (because no-one is ever allowed to do that ever – Kat tried in this book and is suitably punished for daring to question Deacon Chalk).

We continue to have a diverse range of antagonists and powers suggesting the world is extremely broad which is always something I favour. The story itself isn’t complicated or difficult – being a rather linear “protect the prize, kill the enemies” with no great mystery or twists. The enemies are known pretty much from the beginning, what is needed to be cone is known from the beginning. What they’re after is pretty much known from the beginning. It’s another action-film type book, it’s there for fighting and action and adventure and taking hits and keeping moving and overcoming all the odds.

All pretty good so far. And it was a book I couldn’t put down until I’d lost rather a lot of sleep – but not because I was enjoying it, but because I was angry at it – too angry to put it down in case it somehow managed to either redeem itself or damn itself thoroughly. And it damned itself.

What broke me? Deacon Chalk is an arsehole. He’s a self-righteous, judgmental arsehole. He’s right, everyone else is wrong. It’s been growing through the books but this one was the straw that snapped the camel in two.

Dark Angel: Season 2, Episode 18: Dawg Day Afternoon

At Joshua’s, Alec watches the news about the transgenic on every channel (including city officials threatening to sue the government department that created the transgenics) and Joshua is painting a picture of Annie – one of many many pictures of her. Alec tries to talk to Joshua about moving on but he shuts Alec down. And Max arrives with an expensive package for Alec – a birth certificate proving he had a twin and a passport proving he was out of the country during the murders – his name is cleared.

From there to Jam Pony and the television has a Preacher being interviewed saying that transgenics are not due human rights – or even be considered animals and they’re not really alive; supported by Normal of course until he’s interrupted by Logan’s hack. He talks about transgenics’ humanity, but Alec puts it down to him reaching out to Max who is still keeping her distance from him.

White speaks to his boss who is not happy about the disaster, trying to get a free hand to do what he wants now the secret has been blown. His boss won’t have it – acknowledge the transgenics and then there will be a full investigation, congressional hearings etc. He has the police chief in pocket and is willing to work to spin it into non-existence.

Meanwhile Logan is doing the opposite, having paid Asha to get the full, unedited footage of the transgenic worker, showing the police attacking him first. He says he’ll put it on the air but Asha doesn’t see how it will help – people are freaked out because he’s a transgenic and looks odd, the fact he’s not the aggressor won’t change that. Logan realises he’s so used to transgenics that he’s lost the shock factor of them. She also has relationship advice for Logan, but in doing so she gives him the impression that Alec and Max are together. On the footage Logan also sees White’s car – while everyone else is gathered around the transgenic curiously, this car just drives off slowly. With their photo enhancing software of the gods, Logan manages to clear up the image to show Ames white in the wing mirror.

Max and Alec have their tattoos lasered off, though Alec complains that it both hurts and will just come back again (as said in season 1, the tattoo is linked to their genetics and reappears.) Max gets a page from Logan with the news about White but, of course, is ignoring him still. So Logan rings Alec and Alec being Alec, he ignores her protests and puts her on the phone. He fills her in and they agree the cult is involved with the exposure but she won’t meet with Logan and asks him not to call her.

Angst montage!

Moved by his angst, Joshua goes outside to Annie’s house, spying on her through a window while she reads. But her seeing-eye dog barks and men in the street investigate, furious at the idea of a man peeping at a blind girl who can’t see what he’s doing – and that’s before they notice he’s transgenic. They chase him and he hides, all night – but they keep looking all night (and call him “tr@nny” really? They’re going to use that as a slur?) Until Annie’s dog finds him and she wonders why he didn’t tell her he was back. Especially since she looked up his supposed home town and it doesn’t exist – she assumes he was lying to get rid of her and wasn’t really interested. At which point the three men who were chasing Joshua find them. They attack, but Joshua isn’t a docile worker transgenic and he’s stronger than an X5 – after tossing them aside, he grabs Annie’s hand and they run. Joshua tries to get Annie to go home but she hears the men returning and grabs Joshua when he tries to leave, telling him not to leave her alone. He picks her up and runs with her into the tunnels under the city.

This Is Your Life: Lord Akeldama

What is he?: A vampire

Biography: Lord Akeldama is a man of considerable age and influence, ruling his own little group of capable agents collating information and, through that, power across London. If Akeldama doesn’t know it, it isn’t worth knowing and whatever you’re plotting, he’s probably 3 steps ahead of you. While we know little of his past, he lives separate from the usual vampire Hives and eventually rises to become Queen Victoria’s chief vampire advisor. He has a long standing friendship with Alexia and increasingly uses his influence, information and resources to help her. he was in a relationship with one of his agents, Biffy, before Alexia’s intervention ended it.

What We love about him: He is capable, willing to buck tradition and, at least to begin with, be in control of his own life before he became more and more in the thrall of Alexia. He maneuvers well as a vampire with no Hive affiliation and retains a level of influence and power that matches, or beats the Queen. He is a character with immense potential as an agent of his own life and power.

What we hate about him: The problem with Lord Akeldama, is the more he appears, the less likeable he is.  At the beginning, we get the sense that he is crafty, powerful and extremely well connected but as the series progresses, we don’t see him use these skills to his own benefit and instead he becomes little more than a tool for Lady Macon to get her way.  He wafts and sashays and even develops a tolerance to lemons, not because they are damaging but so that he can lighten his hair. He is little more than a walking gay stereotype. If anything, he functions as a really great guide in how not to write gay characters. His break up with Biffy was tragic and deeply problematic.

Book Series: The Parasol Protectorate by Gail Carriger

Bite Me If You Can (Argeneau #6) by Lynsay Sands

Leigh is walking home after closing down her bar when she is approached by a friend who she thought was missing. Unfortunately, he is not alone and brings his vampire sire with him.  Donny's big plan is for Leigh to be turned by his sire so that the two of them can be together forever.  Thankfully for Leigh, Lucian, one of the oldest vampires has been hunting down Morgan on behalf of the vampire council.  He and his crew manage to save Leigh but Morgan escapes.

Lucian has always been the grumpy old man of the Argeneau series. He is after all thousands of years old and one of the original Atlantians. Lucian is not prepared to deal with a baby vamp and sees Leigh as an intrusion on his time until he realises that he cannot read her mind. Those familiar with the series will recognize this as an indicator that Leigh and Lucian are life mates. While Leigh adapts pretty quickly to the idea that she is a vampire the life mate thing makes her very uncomfortable because she recently escaped a physically and emotionally abusive marriage. Lucian must convince Leigh to trust him and on top of that Morgan, the man who turned Leigh has decided that he is not done with her yet.

As with other books in this series, Bite Me If You Can is really light and fluffy.  Sands uses humor to keep the reader interested in the budding romance between Lucian and Leigh. As with all vampires, Lucian has given up food and sex and so the prospect of being intimate again worries him. He has no idea how to woo Leigh and so he heads to the bookstore and picks up the most ridiculous books to use as his guide.  His younger family has to intervene to save him before he makes a complete ass of himself.

Bite Me If You Can, is another in the series which is highly erased. There are no GLBT characters and once again an all White cast.  I am particularly disturbed by the all straight characters because each book not only involves a romance but finding one's life mate. This suggests that forever love, or even love worth celebrating must only occur between straight people. All of the characters continually affirm the absolutely necessity of finding a life mate because it forestalls depression, anti-social behaviour and even insanity.  If life mates only happen in heterosexual relationships and give such benefits, what does this say about same sex couples and the love they experience?

Bitten By Deceit by Shawntelle Madison (Novella)

After Kyle loses a fight with the alpha and the woman he loves more than anything refuses to leave town with him, he sets up shop elsewhere, in the hopes of starting over. He doesn't want to hope that things will get better, even when Emma shows up fleeing the pack because a virus is being spread amongst the werewolves.  Emma is desperate for help because now that she has been bitten, Emma knows that her time is limited and she can already hear the dark thoughts in her mind, as the infection spreads.  Even with the history of disappointment between them, Kyle cannot help but come to her aid when she is threatened by the pack that drove a wedge between them and ousted him.

Since Bitten By Deceit is a novella,  this isn't really going to be a long review.  I chose to read this book because I am fan of Madison's Coveted Series. Fans of Coveted, will find that there is little resemblance to Bitten By Deceit, though Madison does once again return to werewolves. Bitten By Deceit is the typical paint by number paranormal romance novel with no ingenuity and little to recommend it.  To be fair to Madison, I must admit that while I adore her Coveted series, I am not a fan of paranormal romance per say.

From the start of Bitten By Deceit, Madison makes it absolutely clear that Kyle and Emma are in great danger.  They even get attacked in a diner of all places, but what do they do after they escape? Can you guess? They stop for sexy times, cause nothing says your life is at risk, like getting off on the ground, so that you can establish true and forever love.  This is something that happens frequently in paranormal romance and each and every damn time, it gets on my last nerve. It breaks the flow of the story and makes me doubt that the characters are really in peril.

As in far too many paranormal romance stories, Bitten By Deceit, is straight, White, cisgendered and able bodied.  There weren't many characters in the novella, so that gives it somewhat of a pass, but it would have been nice to have in a little diversity. Dominant bodies always seem to be the default in this genre. In this respect, I found the novella disappointing, given that the Coveted series has some of the best treatment of disabled characters that I have ever read.

Bitten By Deceit really is a quick read and in fact, is something you can probably polish off in an hour and half but it won't leave a lasting impression because of the cookie cutter nature of the story itself. This is not say that the story was poorly written or riddled by mistakes; simply unoriginal. If this sort of paint by numbers romance is up your alley, then I would say that Bitten By Deceit is no better or worse than anything else in this vein, it was simply not a good match for me.

Editors Note: A copy of this book was received from Netgalley

Revolution Season 1, Episode 12: Ghosts

Danny and the other dead during the attack are being buried while everyone looks on in grief. Charlie looks on, stony faced and when Rachel tries to take hold of her hand, she pulls away.

Nora reports to Commander Ramsay that scouts from the other camps confirm no further helicopter sightings. He praises Danny – and Nora makes sure he does call him Danny, not just the boy. Commander Ramsay believes it’s time for business as usual which Miles calls “Losing.” The rebellion isn’t have any affect, it’s an annoyance to Monroe. Unless it does a lot more damage, it’s not going to make a difference.

How’s he going to do that? By joining the Rebellion. And first thing he needs is his own soldiers and officers from the militia – the ones who backed him up when he first tried to assassinate Monroe. Starting with someone called Jim Hudson. Great so long as Miles can a) find him and b) not be killed by him. Miles can manage the first part – 50%’s not too bad, right?

The next day Miles saddles up – and Rachel wishes he would hang around a little longer – not for her of course, but for Charlie. But Miles is having an angst moment – he’s made nothing better.

Charlie and the others go on to another rebel base and that night Nicholas takes Charlie on a raid against some nearby militia troops. Rachel begs her not to but Charlie has to do something and shuts down her mother again.

Aaron goes through their things and takes out 2 power pendants. This is detected by creepy Randal for Monroe, who can track them when they’re turned on – and he turns them on remotely. Grace taught him how. Monroe objects to Randal’s disrespectful tone but Randal says he can hand Monroe a continent with the pendants, more amplifiers and scientists like John.

Miles and Nora are riding looking for this Jim Hudson – and Miles is doing the “I’m sad and tortured but am too damn manly to admit it” thing and snaps at Nora when she tries to get him to talk. Unfortunately one of the people  at the camps saw him and tell the militia where Mile’s going and why. He gets killed by the militia for his trouble showing that he’s a fool and the militia’s not exactly intelligent when it comes to maintaining sources.

Interlude for another scene of Rachel trying to get through to Charlie and Charlie showing how big and tough she is now since she’s blood spattered and keeps brushing her own mother off. Miles and Nora arrive in Culpepper, the next stage in looking for Jim Hudson, the locals don’t seem to know him but the library – in the dystopian world there aren’t a lot of libraries – catches Miles’s eye and he finds Jim Hudson inside, under a false name of Henry Beamis. And he has a wife, Sophie. “Henry” makes noises of them leaving soon to his wife but when Miles is stubborn about it, he meets Nora and Miles privately

Being Human (US) Season 3, Episode 12: Always the Bridesmaid and Never Alive

Sally has a nightmare of being naked on a slab, her body marked out for carving and Donna sharpening a big knife and stabbing her

Well, her subconscious doesn’t do subtle, does it?

She wakes up looking a little rotty around the edges and practices reading some Latin – assumably some help Ilana prepared for her.

Aidan is still angsting about Kenny and chaining him up. And Josh is worried about their wedding going ahead with a complete lack of fanfare and how, with Emily gone, he has no ties with his old life. Nora continues to be shockingly awesome and has some wise words to make everything sound better.

When Nora and Josh come downstairs there’s a beautiful wedding arch in the living room. And Aidan is in the kitchen, cooking breakfast (Josh doesn’t know what he’s more surprised by: Aidan’s mastery of Jewish wedding tradition or him actually cooking) – and Aidan is both caterer and officient (apparently ordained via internet) though I love how Josh can’t leave the food alone and has to take over the cooking.

Kat arrives with a bottle and she tells Nora about having sex with Aidan for the first time and him running out on her. Nora leaves Aidan and Kat together and they make it up and play nice and are all lovey dovey. Nora goes up to check on Sally – who looks awful, extremely rotting, no longer with an urge to eat people and falling apart from the inside out. Sally is worried about ruining Nora’s wedding day but Nora tells her the whole reason they wanted to get married so soon is so Sally could be a part of it.

Council in the kitchen while everyone worries about Sally – and the problem of having a rotting corpse at the wedding in front of Kat, to say nothing of the vampire in the basement – and some extra banter between the parties as well.

Josh and Aidan go to see Sally and she’s despairing over losing her soul (she has given up on her body) and has adopted a pretty defeatist attitude – especially since she doesn’t understand the incantation she has from Ilana. Aidan tells her she can’t trick her way out of it – and when the door arrives, he’s going through it with her. It’s not a move-on door, it’s a witch portal, he thinks he can follow. She tries to oppose it but Aidan insists.

Josh goes downstairs to worry about this with Nora, especially since Aidan has no idea what he’s facing. He worries that they made the wrong decision bringing Sally back from the dead. Nora asks if he needs to go as well (Ok, dingding full redemption for Nora! All is forgiven, rarely has a character done such a complete turnaround!) but he says it’s their wedding day and he told her she’d always come first and he meant it. And she says the fact that he cares so much about his friends is why she chose him – and why she’ll marry him when he comes home.

Aidan and Josh gather around Sally’s bedside while she coughs horribly. Josh asks if it’s time – she says it’s not a World War 2 romance and she doesn’t have consumption – if they ask her that again she’s going to flash some tattered zombie flesh at them – she does so and they both recoil. Nora arrives to shoo them both out because when she realised Sally was likely to be returned to ghosthood, she went shopping. Lots of shopping, so Sally can die in an outfit of her choosing (the clothes she then has to wear every day). They joyously try on clothes until Sally becomes too shaky to stand – she sits down and says that it’s time.

They gather again around Sally and Sally gives Nora her grandmother’s Thaali necklace, worn by Indian women to symbolise the bond of marriage- it’s Nora’s something borrowed. She then snarks their deathbed vigil skills. There’s a lot of extremely touching speeches her, beautiful acting and a real beautiful display of how powerful their relationship is and what they mean to each other. It’s one of the best scenes Being Human has ever had. Sally dies.

And comes back as a ghost! Josh can’t see her because he hasn’t had his first full moon yet (and is pretty choked up about it). Aidan says they need to arm themselves while waiting for Donna’s door; but Sally points out she has no grip now. But Aidan has an idea for non-traditional weapons- which involves, as Sally puts it “gouging a hole in my corpse!” I love how they’ve mastered the recoiling from the icky. They need a more mystical weapon -  Sally’s heart, the heart of the bewitched, is their weapon, certainly trumps blood, hair and fingernails normally used in witchcraft. They do the standard flailing bickering thing when the door arrives.

They head for the door – it’s blocking the entrance of the room. Josh kisses Nora goodbye. The three of them go through the door.

Fangs for the Fantasy Episode 115

This week we discuss the season finale of The Walking Dead and the return of Game of Thrones and Revolution. We also look at Being Human (US) as we reach the end of the season.

We also looked at the mini-series In the Flesh and the incredible emotional impacts of this amazing series.

Our book of the week is The Struggle by L. J. Smith

Our next books of the week are:

1st April - 8th April: Etiquette and Espionage by Gail Carriger

8th April - 15th April: The Queen is Dead by Kate Locke

15th April - 22nd April: The Stepsister Scheme by Jim C Hines

22nd April - 29th April: First Grave on the Right by Darynda Jones

29th April - 6th May: Darkfever by Karen Marie Moning

6th May - 13th May: Dead Ever After by Charlaine Harris