The Mussorgsky Riddle by Darin Kennedy

Psychic detective Mira Tejedor is called in to try to find Anthony Faircloth, a boy lost in his own mind and nearly catatonic to the outside world. Nearly immediately, the riddle of the mysterious music in Anthony’s head becomes intertwined with a local missing persons case, and it’s up to Mira to solve them both.

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Overall: There are some clever ideas here, and the mystery does hold together (with the ending…mostly working, even if the foreshadowing could have been better). I’ll call it “middling”—it’s not a bad book, but I wasn’t crazy about it either (as evidenced by all my nitpicking).

Random Mini-Reviews

Eternals (2006 miniseries) - A revamp of a Jack Kirby creation by Neil Gaiman, it’s…very Jack Kirby. Clearly he wanted to tell more New Gods stories after his contract with DC ran out and he came back to Marvel, so he set up yet another version of the “immortal beings with loosely-defined powers that are also superheroes” that he was so famous for. It feels over-done by this point (even with Gaiman’s re-vamps) and integrates poorly with the existing Marvel universe, circa Civil War.

Fear Nothing by Dean Koontz (comic adaptation) - Chris Snow has a genetic disorder that makes him very vulnerable to light…nonsensically so, because he cites UV light as the reason he must stay in the dark, and you know what blocks UV light? Glass. And he goes out in the sun with only a ball cap and sunglasses (not even the wrap-around kind!) for protection, rather than a big floppy hat or even a mask. The writer and the artist of the adaptation apparently didn’t talk much, as the art occasionally depicts scenes far different than the narration implies, and the colorist apparently didn’t get the “light sensitive” memo, because plenty of the indoor scenes are lit normally and Snow doesn’t care. Oh, and it sets up a big mystery that apparently Koontz hasn’t even bothered to write the final book that resolves, despite claiming he would since 2003. (Why on earth would you adapt something like this without hope of getting a resolution for it?) I got this for free and I think I overpaid.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus - I hadn’t quite connected that this was a Terry Gilliam film when I started watching it, but there was no doubt about that at the end. It can’t decide who the protagonist is, but that’s okay, because none of the obvious choices really get happy endings. It’s very pretty and there are some funny bits, but at the end you have the, “What the hell did I just watch?” moment common to Terry Gilliam films. I give them credit for getting together something resembling a coherent narrative given Ledger’s death and the subsequent restructuring of the film, but I have to think parts of it were never intended to make sense; and there are a few transitions that are just too emotionally abrupt. Tom Waits as Mr. Nick is just delightful, though.

Liberty Science Center have a Sid the Science Kid temporary exhibit, which was great and ARR loved it*, but I had a weird random thought: I think the cast, despite being digital muppets who are colored Simpsons-yellow, are supposed to be black. (Cursory internet research reveals that Sid is supposed to be half-African, half-Jewish.) This occurred to me because the only non-yellow character is pink. Not that it really matters regardless, but it struck me as an odd bit of stealth-diversity.

* Though I can’t get the “Looking For My Friends” song out of my head, and I don’t think ARR can either.