3% Revisited

by | Nov 8, 2018 | Television

In April 2017 I gave a lukewarm review to the Netflix series 3%, but now that I have seen the second season I am liking it much better. Season 2 occurs about a year after Season 1 and focuses mostly on the Cause and how they plan to stop the upcoming Process. (If you haven’t seen it or read the first review, the Process is a procedure whereby 20-year-olds can compete and hopefully be chosen to leave their miserable lives in the Inland to live in the utopic society of the Offshore.)

The plot involves Cause members both Offshore and Inland working together, most of whom we’ve seen before, and through flashbacks we get to see what happened to them in the intervening year. As befits this series, there are many surprises, betrayals, and deaths to keep the viewer interested.  I won’t give away the ending, but I will say it’s one of those which could end the series or pave the way to something new.

After finishing the second season, I did something I never do – I rewatched the entire first season. I did this mainly because I remembered how intriguing the Process itself was and wanted to experience it again. Of course, it also reminded me of what happened with each character and why they were in their current situation at the beginning of Season 2.

I don’t often change my opinion of a show this much. One of the things I said originally was that I didn’t like the acting. Now I believe it was just the dubbing I found annoying. The concept and plot are really quite good. If you get a chance, watch 3% and join me in hoping there’s a Season 3.

Black Helicopters Crash and Burn

by | Oct 12, 2018 | Books

Black Helicopters by Caitlin R. Kiernan is a confusing story of a dystopian Earth, in which accounts are given in several voices ranging over different periods spanning almost 200 years. There are two factions, X and Y, some evil creatures emerging from a bay in Maine, and two albino twin sisters at the middle of this tale. There is also a vague reference to psychological experiments done to these women, along with others.

Kiernan does weave a sense of unease throughout this book, but I am the type of person who likes to know at least the essence of what’s going on before the last page. In Black Helicopters, it’s not even clear what has happened to the Earth by the last page, let alone the main characters. Perhaps that was the author’s intent, but it’s just not my style. For that reason, I cannot recommend this book.