Sigh.

So I always look forward to pleasant_valley's book posts. Even though I don't get much time for reading books (it took me six weeks to get through those Star Wars books, and that was even with me pretty much sticking to only one of the storylines!), I really enjoy reading about what interesting things are out there. It gives me a mental checklist for if there's ever a time when I do have more time for reading again. Plus I just plain like seeing her opinions of the books.

She always asks things like what we've read in the past month. I mentioned the Star Wars books, but I totally forgot to mention something else I tried to start reading recently.

Keyword: tried.

So there's this local author who is fairly successful and well-known. He's written a particular series of books and some other, unrelated books.

One of those latter books I really found fascinating. It involved a rift between time and space and a girl from the present and a young man from the past who can meet when that rift opens. Eventually he and some others from his time period come to the present briefly. The book ends with the main characters separated again, but with the hope that the rift will open again for them.

I know it probably sounds terribly cheesy from that summary, but it was actually really good and I honestly loved the bond between the main characters. Their interaction was beautiful and character-developing for both of them and I seriously rooted for them.

I've had the sequel sitting around here for a while and I finally got around to trying it a couple of weeks ago or so.

I was ... honestly really disappointed.

One of the big draws about the first book was people from the past coming to the present. I find that infinitely more fascinating than people from the present going to the past.

The sequel is mostly all in the past, with the present-day characters going through a rift after they hear of trouble in the past from a poor guy who passed through the barrier to warn them before dying of wounds. Worse, the young man the girl is trying to find so desperately is absent for most of the book. He's been kidnapped, and it takes the majority of the book before they find him.

The two barely get to interact at all. Considering a reunion between them was one of the big things I was looking forward to in a sequel, I definitely found that lacking.

Also, the author decided to cross it over with his long-running series of books. You could tell he was really into that idea and excited to have the characters from the two series interact. I can totally understand that enthusiasm. But it seemed like he focused more attention on the characters he was bringing in rather than the ones who should be carrying the book.

I feel like I don't have much right to complain about that one, considering my own problem of loving episodic oneshot characters so much that they can sometimes gleefully run away with a story and leave the show's actual main characters in the dust. But since I really don't read the guy's other series, I'm not familiar with those characters at all and I'm disappointed to not have more focus on the ones I was reading the book for.

It also leaves things with people still in the past. And the time warps get really, really confusing. They're appearing all over the place, and sometimes the locations they lead to will change. And time is so fluid that in one part they're told that four years have passed, while going through another rift causes it to only be 18 months. At the end, one character ended up at least twenty years into the future! My brain hurts. I really think he went a little too wild with his time warps. And he says that the storyline will continue in any future books he writes in the other series. Sigh.

I want to see the characters get home. I want to see more characters from the past come into the present. I want to see if any of them decide to stay in the present. That was so much more interesting because it's so much less explored! (And because I love our present so much and can hardly stand to think of being stuck in the past without modern-day sanitation and other things....) But if we only get to see the storyline continue in books from the other series, it sounds like they'll probably be staying in the past for a long time and that the focus won't ever be solely on them again. I wonder if the characters I was rooting for will have any better interaction in another book than they did in what was supposed to be their own sequel.

(Also, a minor quibble is the main girl's full name. She's called Kerra, and I try to forget that the dad named her Sakerra because of the Japanese word for cherry blossoms. Ummmm.... Please to be spelling the word correctly if you're using it in such a key way, Sir. It should be Sakura! **headdesk.** I wonder if anyone has ever informed him that it's totally spelled and pronounced wrong.)

Sigh. So yeah. That was a really big disappointment. When I realized how the book was going, I started skimming and skipping around until I found where they finally found the guy. I'm not even sure I'll bother reading the stuff that came in-between. I think I'd rather focus on a little stack of unread books I have by my absolute favorite author, who writes mystery/suspense. There's usually a (clean) romance in the books, too, which sometimes makes me roll my eyes, but I tolerate it because I love the mysteries so much. He was a law enforcement officer for many years, and the books are really accurate on police and legal procedures because of that. I just adore them. I try to get every book of his that comes out. I'm still missing a few, which aggravates me as some of those few are out of print. But I have the majority of them.

A deep, dark secret revealed....

So I have several unpopular U.N.C.L.E. opinions.

One is, of course, that I feel it works in any modern time period and it can take place in the present day without any significant changes to its formula or the characters whatsoever. I feel that if they had wanted it to be a period piece, they would have put in Cold War themes. Eliminating those, the show isn't dated and holds up extremely well through the years. Any of its plots could easily take place in 2015 instead of 1965. It only seems to take place in the 1960s because that was when it was made, not because the 1960s are crucial to what it is.

Second is that I highly enjoy season 3. I have a hard time seeing what's so terrible about the show being a little funnier. It doesn't usually seem as over-the-top as most people say it is. Plus, Napoleon and Illya's friendship deepened a lot in season 3 and there was more hurt/comfort. I honestly didn't see a lot of incidents of danger being treated in a light-hearted manner, either, except in The Super-Colossal Affair. And if people are referring to weird things being dangerous, like a loaf of bread, I think that was something featured to some extent in every season.

But a third opinion is something I've never dared to say in any U.N.C.L.E. gathering place. The deepest, darkest U.N.C.L.E. secret I have is ...

... I don't hate My Friend, The Gorilla Affair.

I don't think it's the worst episode of the series by far; I think that honor goes to The Super-Colossal Affair (which is a super-colossal epic FAIL of stupid. A giant stink bomb? Oh please). In My Friend, The Gorilla Affair, I thought Napoleon's interaction with Girl was adorable and I loved seeing Percy Rodriguez as the leader they're trying to help. I was also amused by the goofy explorer (or whatever he was; it's been a long time since I've seen the episode).

I honestly scratch my head in confusion trying to figure out what's so terrible about the episode. Most people say they hate it because the gorilla dances. That's like ... one minute. I guess I just don't see how one minute can ruin a whole episode, especially in that case. Anyway, I thought the gorilla was probably just copying what he'd seen Girl do; it didn't seem that far-fetched to me.