TV: Missing (1.1 Pilot and 1.2 The Hard Drive)

The Missing isn't a new premise. We've seen it before and it's nothing, if not Sarah Connor gets transplanted into the Bourne-verse. Ashley Judd plays Becca Winstone, an ex-CIA operative who's spent the last ten years raising her son after her active CIA husband is killed in a car bombing finds herself suddenly back in the life after her son is kidnapped from his architecture school in Rome. Let me say that it is awesome to watch Ashley Judd kicking ass and taking names. I like how focused and dangerous the she is, although the Mama Bear trope is a little overused, I like how its also nuanced by her sooper sekrit CIA operative past and those wacky awesome ninja skilllz.

( Becca isn't just a mother looking for her son; both she and Michael's father were CIA agents, so whoever took Michael has messed with the wrong mother. )

Book: Night Circus, The by Erin Morgenstern (2011)

The Night Circus is my favorite read of the year so far. Although, I anticipated that I would have trouble with the narrative's temporal structure and the shifting POV's, the overlapping, ins and outs, worked very, very well.

"The Night Circus is a phantasmagorical fairy tale set near an ahistorical Victorian London in a wandering magical circus that exists only from sunset to sunrise. Le Cirque des Rêves features such wonders and "ethereal enigmas" as a blooming garden made all of ice and a fire-breathing paper dragon. Its truly magical nature is occluded under the guise of legerdemain. The curious circus develops avid fans who distinguish themselves to each other by wearing the black and white of the circus tents, with a splash of red. The magicians Prospero the Enchanter and the enigmatic Mr. A.H— groom their young proteges, Celia and Marco, to proxy their rivalry with the exhibits as a stage." - Summary from Wikipedia (yes, I hate writing summaries)

The Night Circus is imaginative, surprising, and enthralling. Morgenstern does a gorgeous job of building the narrative and tightening the noose until the explosive ending. A really unique read, overall I loved the style of the novel and Morgenstern's stunning use of language. There were some hiccups in the novel, I would have liked the fate of the initial catalog of characters to be more organically woven into the novel's close. The threads of the novel were gathered a little haphazardly at the end so it felt rushed in some places. Although, in the novel's defense, Celia's unraveling lends itself to the frenetic close. The frame narrative was also rather ingeniously revealed. Loved the novel!!