- miko || 巫女 -

Apparently I fill out book reviews quarterly?

The Whisper of Legends by Barbara Fradkin: This is an Inspector Green novel, but it wasn't my favourite in the series. Instead of the usual Ottawa setting, this is a fish-out-of-water cop in the wilderness of BC book... not really what I want from this series. Green spends most of it sadly incompetent as a city-boy and without much of a mystery to solve until right near the end.

The Fall Guy by Barbara Fradkin: I must have stuck this one on my list thinking it was a normal novel in a different series by this author, but it's actually a "quick reads" short story. The main character is a somewhat bumbling carpenter who - as with most cozies - gets implicated in a death and has to figure out what happened so he doesn't get sued (rather than jailed, which would be the more standard one). It was meh, if it hadn't been so short I probably wouldn't have finished it. It did improve somewhat, but there just isn't enough book for it to feel like it had more than sketched caricatures rather than fleshed characters.

Magic Rises by Ilona Andrews: This is part of a long running series that I normally really enjoy... but it's now suffering from the fact that the characters are too powerful in their home positions and normal circumstances, so to get some tension, this one takes Kate and Curran to Europe to deal with packs there. Plus, Kate's past that she's generally been hiding from (but not distractingly so) in the other books comes to the forefront. Darker than the earlier books in the series, though still enjoyable enough. Turns out I'm just not that keen on the big climactic battles as series start to wrap up.

A Slip of the Keyboard by Terry Pratchett: Didn't finish this collection of short essays. It suffered from too much of the same - it's just a bunch of pretty similar bits that Pratchett wrote for various publications and conventions over the years. There were probably a few things you could glean, but it's certainly not something I could sit and read through... and honestly, it was only going to dull my enjoyment of his fiction knowing his thoughts on the writing process. Probably best that I stopped.

Unbound by Jim C. Hines: The latest in the libriomancer series was... okay. Isaac is without his powers in this one, and honestly not that interesting because of it. His ridiculous team up buddies were kinda fun, and the book moves along quickly enough, but I didn't love the bad guy dynamic and I find that when the character is working on a puzzle that's unsolvable by the reader to be a little unexciting.

Chew [3] by John Layman: I continue to enjoy this comic book series. FDA agent who can see the history of things he eats, and his competent girlfriend who can describe foods so strongly that people taste them? Ridiculous and amusing.

The Doomsday Equation by Matt Richtel: Here's an unusual one - I didn't like the main character, but it didn't detract from my enjoyment of this book! He's a jerk of a Silicon Valley techie who is super wrapped up in himself and his software that predicts conflict... which fails when he field tests it. When it predicts a nuclear war he doesn't know if the software is still broken or if something terrible is coming, cue odd techno-nerd thriller from there. Enjoyable because he was believable enough and didn't need to be sympathetic for the story to work.

Karen Memory by Elizabeth Bear: This book is set in a steampunk historical west coast (Seattle/Portland/etc) city and features a main character who is a prostitute and all her coworkers, fighting against the (inevitably corrupt) mayor. I liked it! It gets a bit overly magical at the end (the tech is not believable), but I liked the writing and the characters.

Johnny Hiro by Fred Chao: A comic book about a young guy making a living in a town that is home to ninja gangs, dinosaurs, etc. Completely absurd but played relatively straight, this was a fun one with an appropriate art style.

Kop by Warren Hammond: In a future colony world where the economy has collapsed, a corrupt cop works to keep his corrupt chief in power. The setting of this one is pretty interesting - the colony world is very poor, but still has periodic interaction with rich offworlders/earthers... so while most of it is pretty low tech, there's a wide range on occasion. The main character isn't a particularly smart or good person, but he grows on you. I'm planning to keep on with the series.

Magic Breaks by Ilona Andrews: I think this is the Kate Daniels book where half of it is about her husband's ex-wife trying to ruin their marriage? If so, I didn't enjoy that. There's rare glimpses of the intelligence I expect from Kate and Curran (they do talk about what his ex-wife is doing, rather than being pissed off at each other all the time per her machinations), but it was a tiring read. Oh, and big-bad continues to be big and bad as the main story line, I guess.

Man of La Mancha [CD]: Apropos of nothing, I like the music from Man of La Mancha although my knowledge of the play and Don Quixote is meager.

Wicked [CD]: However, with the exception of the song "popular", which is fun, I don't like the music from Wicked. So dense. So repetitive. Maybe I'd be more inclined to it if I saw the musical, but I'm guessing I've got enough bias at this point that it'd be hard to turn enjoy.

A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan: This is a book that is... hm... pride and prejudice with dragons, I suppose. I liked it a lot! The book is written as a memoir from the now old Lady Trent, describing her early life and obsession with learning about dragons. I enjoyed her scientific approach (very field naturalist) and even enjoyed the regency styling of the historical period. I'll be getting out more in the series - looking forward to seeing how she evolves into her older self through the stories.

Planetary [2] by Warren Ellis: Planetary continues to be a kinda weird comic book about super powered individuals. I enjoy it while I'm reading it but haven't developed any meaningful connection to the characters. The artwork is pretty good.

The Best Laid Plans by Terry Fallis: I wasn't sure I'd enjoy this book much. It's about a last-ditch candidacy run by a party insider for a candidate that doesn't want to be elected to parliament at all... so of course, a huge scandal breaks on the incumbent and this guy gets elected instead. It was marketed as being a funny look inside Canadian politics, but it came across more as a lefty-fantasy about unseating Jim Flaherty with a down-to-earth left wing professor who would turn parliament on its head, for the assumed-better. That said, I enjoyed it well enough for what it was - the characters were quirky and the climax amusing.

Legacy by Jeanne C. Stein: Oh dear, this series fell on its face. Weird "sexy" scenes, stupid issues that would have been solved by better communication, introduction of more supernatural things kinda pointlessly... not good. Plus, nothing of her doing her bounty hunter job, which was what made this series interesting. I'll not continue with this one, there's much better urban fantasy to be had.

My Fair Lady [CD]: I like the music from My Fair Lady well enough. Not as much as our band conductor, though!

Unsympathetic Magic by Laura Resnick: The library didn't have the second book in the Esther Diamond series, so I've skipped ahead to the third. This one was our aspiring actress getting caught up in a voodoo plot... not as good as the first one, but generally still an amusing romp. Would have liked more of the knowledgeable wizard friend and for the book not to have had such a ridiculous cover. Although it did stop a guy from continuing to talk to me on the bus when he asked what I was reading and I flipped it over...

Deadout by Jonathan McGoran: This is the second book in a series of weird eco-thrillers, the first of which I didn't like until the twist turned out not to be as preachy as I'd feared. For this second one, I didn't have that weighing on me, so I just played along as the author unspooled a weird story set in Martha's Vineyard with genetically modified bees and colony collapse and all that fun stuff. The main character is still dumb as a bag of bricks, so things just sort of happen around him while he gets in fights with random people. This one was straightforward and predictable as far as the evildoers' plot goes, which was a tad disappointing since the other one actually surprised me. I think continuing with this character is a mistake, though, and the stories would probably have been better as standalones. Now it just seems like weird eco-crises follow him around.

Valour and Vanity by Mary Robinette Kowal: This is somewhere in the series that is regency-with-magic where people can fold light to make images. The main characters are now happily married and doing well for themselves, which of course means they need to be attacked by pirates and be without their resources for most of the book. If you didn't get the sarcasm in text form, I promise it was there in my head. Then, later, the book turns into a heist story abruptly. There are a few novel uses of the magic, but that's about all there is to recommend this one. Earlier in the series was more satisfying.

Huh, it's almost been a year of Ipsy bags for me now. I'm still enjoying it, though I'm eyeing a potential change with Birchbox releasing to Canada soon. Ipsy still does more makeup, though.

October's bag was a cute blue bag with puffed square patches, similar to the best Ipsy bag (the black one that I use for my DS). Haven't found a use for it yet, but I will.

Here's what I got:

Ayres - Patagonia Body Butter: This is a serviceable moisterizer, but it's a bit too scented for comfort. It'll be relegated to feet and legs, I think.

H2O+ - Face Oasis Hydrating Treatment: Is it weird that I'm happy with this one because the container is cute? The product is a gel that you smear on your face after showering as a moisterizer. I actually like it a bit better than moisterizers for that purpose (mostly I just let myself be dry, though... if I wasn't cool with that, I probably wouldn't use bar soap on my face), so it'll probably get some winter use.

Jesse's Girl - Mineralized Baked Shadow Powder in "Ocean Breeze": It's blue, it's substantial, it's well packed and pretty. Applied with good colour and not much fallout, and I was so pleased not to get another skin-colour eyeshadow. Thumbs up.

Skyn Iceland - Mini Glacial Cleansing Cloths: Uh. These are 10 little wet nap things that are sort of soapy and for your face. They take off makeup pretty well, so I did use one when we had a blackout and I didn't want to fuss trying to get mascara off my eyes by candlelight. That said, the idea that you would use these away from a bathroom is goofy - there is a definite sticky residue from the soap after application. Also, if you let it dry on you without rinsing, it feels weirdly like burning (no ill effects, though, so I think it's just the "cooling" sensation wearing off uncomfortably).

Starlooks - Lip Gloss in "Guilty Pleasure": This lip gloss is ridiculously sticky. It came out of the tube looking like melted chewing gum, and I gamely tried to apply it anyway, but it wasn't anything I want to do again. Somewhat vanilla scented. Boring pink colour. Remained sticky and made me feel like a middle-schooler.

So, not the best bag, but mostly useable. I also spent my Ipsy points on something that I should receive in November; this is my first time redeeming for something, since Ipsy is now doing lower point-value rewards (so it's not impossible for people who don't have referrals).

Let's see how much I remember about the books I've read in the past while!

Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone: This is a strange book. It's set in a industrial age world with gods and magic and... lawyers who do necromancy, ish? I didn't hate it, but it didn't exactly enthrall me either. It felt like there was a bit too much going on, as if the author had done a lot of world building and couldn't wait to show it off, but really, not all of it needed to be in this book. Towards the end it was also rather predictable.

Village of the Ghost Bears by Stan Jones: Huh, this book was significantly better than all the other ones in the series. I quite liked it - still a bit bothered by the main character's relationship, but the story was very good.

Feeling Good by David D. Burns: What was I doing reading a self-help book about depression? I don't remember, but it was on my list so I got it out. I read the intro and skimmed through the rest - mostly it told me that I do not have self esteem issues, unlike, apparently, a lot of depressed people. Also, if someone offers you a quiz to test your depression levels, it will almost always tell you that you are moderately depressed because if you answer anything other than "rarely" or "never" to their very generic questions (like, do you feel sad in a week), you fall into the huge "moderate depression" category. Mostly the author spent his time trying to convince you that the book might work for you. It felt like a placebo at best, a con at worst.

Junkyard Dogs by Craig Johnson: Aw, the Longmire TV show got cancelled this year. Oh well, at least I can still read the books! This one, as usual, was good - I enjoyed the scenery and characters around the scrapyard. The mystery was a bit contrived, though, and no one seemed like they reacted enough to the fact that this was a massive serial killer they were going after. Strange.

Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor: This is a young adult novel that's basically a kid magic coming of age story, with modern Nigeria as a background. I presume the magic system is based off of Nigerian folklore as well, though I didn't go and look it up. It was a fun enough read, didn't take too long.

Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson: This book/series came very oddly recommended to me. I was lent a copy with the comment that I'd probably like it, but that it was a pretty confusing read and that the recommender had never gone on with the series because of that... next a coworker told me that the second book was really good, and that the first book would eventually make sense... a similar comment came from my neighbour at band, who read it and felt like she should read it a second time to make sense of things (but she never had). So, uh, often recommended but not exactly highly?

With all that warning, I went through the first third of the book with it just sort of washing over me. There was a lot of different characters and not a lot of explanation as to why anything was happening. The next third introduced even more characters and pulled together some background into a bit more coherent of a world. The final third pulled all the characters physically together, unmasked a few things and was generally a let down. Yeah, that's right: the part that should have been the pay off was just disappointing. They built up a character the entire book and then took away what made her interesting without doing anything about it... I only ever came to care at all about one of the characters (out of a huge cast)... and frankly, there was just a lot going on for no real reason.

I think fantasy writers should learn something from mystery writers. It's great that you have a huge world in your head, but you don't have to shove it all down my throat. Subtlety makes for a way better payoff... I don't want to get to the end and be thinking "about damn time you explained that nonsense from the beginning", I want "oh my god, that was foreshadowed and I didn't even notice it at the time, you clever bastard".

Did I hate it? Nah. But I wouldn't recommend it either, it's just another weird-ass epic fantasy that leaves you at the end of 700 pages wondering whether you really got that much out of it. Also, the title of the book is a strange choice, and I was constantly troubled by the idea that there was a mobile "moon" that apparently didn't cause gravitational effects. Totally unnecessary as well.

I continue to keep busy with work + costuming efforts at home, so here's the belated quick reviews of what I've read since last month.

Shaded Vision by Yasmine Galenorn

The series continues. This one was focussed on the were-sister and was generally pretty pleasant to read... it's fading rapidly, but I do remember thinking that the core of this one was a commentary on hate crimes. It wasn't subtle at all.

Defending Battered Women on Trial by Elizabeth A. Sheehy

I didn't read all of this one, just the one chapter about a local case. Beyond the details of the case, it also talked a fair bit about the very negative portrayal in media and the aggressive tone of the police and prosecution. An unsettling read.

Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson

This was a well written fantasy novel with the most god damned inconsistent and illogical magic system I've ever read. It was like the magic system was made up by an 8 year old and then the book was written by an adult. Perhaps that's really how it was. Anyway, it was a good enough read, but I found it really off-putting when near the end one of the characters started expounding on the magic system as if it was scientific and well-studied and made any damn sense.

Also, calling it "BioChroma" when nothing else is inner-capped like that made me think it was a brand name every time it came up.

Cinder by Melissa Meyer

So good!

Seriously, I know a lot of the time when I write about things I'm pretty down on the flaws, but I really liked this one. It's a young adult novel that's a sci-fi Cinderella story - the Cinderella character is a cyborg and mechanic, and she is clever and interesting, as are the other characters. I'm very much looking forward to picking up the next in the series... although it stands alone okay, it doesn't have a happily-ever-after ending and the sci-fi intrigue looks to be excellent.

Another quick post, before I forget everything.

Inferno by Dan Brown

I haven't read any other Dan Brown novels. His use of ellipses and italics is hilarious - M and I read this out loud to each other for a while and it was awesome and probably entirely inappropriate for the book. Although I enjoyed it well enough, the oddity of this book was that the main character was utterly unimportant to me: if he'd been replaced with an art history textbook or an internet connection for the secondary character to figure out the "mystery", I'd have been just as pleased.

Also, I was utterly pleased with the twist / resolution of the book, except that it kinda messed up everything that happened before. Spoiler: it really screws up your narrative if it turns out that the crazy guy who was releasing a plague to reduce human population is actually a pretty sane guy with a really reasonable solution considering his ideals and talents. I got to the end and was like "huh, that's the best way he could have handled this" and then went "wait, so why did he make this crazy art treasure map thing and commit suicide? Dude had a legit solution and could even have just lived on as normal."

It didn't sit right in retrospect, 'cause I'm pretty sure the guy had to be sane. I need an explanation for why he did this nutty thing, and I can't resolve it in my brain. If you have one, I would like to hear it and stop thinking about it myself - all I've got is "ego", but ego doesn't usually commit suicide.

Promise of Blood by Ian McClellan

This is an industrial age fantasy series, which was pleasantly unusual: although there are traditional mages in it, the main characters are powder mages - mages who use gunpowder and guns. It's the first in the series (and only, at the moment), and I liked it surprisingly. You know I'm not much for series where I don't like the characters as people, but this one didn't bother me. They seemed like legitimate people doing what seemed reasonable in their situations, and the setting and writing were quite good.

The plot started strong as a political drama - the cover of the book itself will tell you that it starts with a coup - and stayed well paced despite having to introduce me to new magic concepts. It honestly gets a bit weird, with gods and big magic... but the characters also think it's weird, so I stayed in the zone while reading it. Looking forward to another in the series.

Hexed [short story anthology] by Ilona Andrews, Yasmine Galenorn, Allyson James and Jeanne C. Stein

This book was a set of four tie-in novellas for urban fantasy (/romance) series. Two of the series I have read (highly recommend Ilona Andrews series, would not generally recommend Yasmine Galenorn's because I'm uncomfortable recommending heavily romance series to people, but it's there if you want it). Here's my thoughts on the stories:

Magic dreams / Ilona Andrews

I really thought I'd read this one before, but it turned out I hadn't! It follows a weretiger (who I didn't remember, but was probably there in passing in the main series) and also the werecat Alpha (who has been a prominent, if still secondary character). I didn't love it the way I do the main series. It felt too much like it was just a tossed off story because the authors wanted to hook up the Alpha and I didn't really feel like the relationship was genuine since I had no impression of them having previous interactions. This was not a story from that universe that I cared about.

Ice shards / Yasmine Galenorn

This was why I actually picked up the anthology: this novella went before the last book I read in this series, and it was seriously annoying not having its back story. It resolves the story of Iris, who has always been a secondary but interesting character in the main series. Predictable (maybe because I'd read the book after it... but I think regardless), but pleasant.

Double hexed / Allyson James

Oh my god. This was a tragic look into what appears to be a terrible series. Half mystic indian / half goddess (literally) main character! Sexy weredragon boyfriend! Reformed vampire! Sexy Coyote (yes, the trickster god) who hits on her as well! Magic mirror who also hits on her / is a super perv! Big magic curse making them all lose control at the same time!

Yeah, it was bad. I can only imagine the series is the same, but probably with more sex scenes.

Blood debt / Jeanne C. Stein.

Vampire bounty hunter, who has human partner bounty hunters (who she is not sleeping with and who also don't know she's a vampire). Still some gratuitous moments, but overall pretty enjoyable. I'm going to try one of the books in the series and see if it's any good - seems like there's some potential, at least.

Quick thoughts on the recent books I've read: less complete than usual because I left it too long and my memory is fading.

The Dark Horse by Craig Johnson

Enjoyable mystery; the twist was a tad predictable. Outside of the usual physical boundaries (not in the county, but in another small local town). A bit blasé about an innocent's death, which was somewhat unusual.

Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett

Not a set of characters that I like - this was about Moist aka the guy from the books about the post office and the bank and the mint. Disappointing how God-like Vetinari is written (it was always like this a bit, but it grated on me), and the lack of characters I do like despite it being mostly set in Ankh-Morpork. Vimes was there but not particularly enjoyably.

Princess of Glass by Jessica Day George

Good enough for a young adult novel. Still bugs me that all the new princesses are victims - I actually would have liked Cinderella to be the jerk she was initially presented as. But I guess in a fluff series, I can't really expect that. At least the main character (a princess from the first book) was generally quite pleasant and heroic.

I figure if this took me more than 2 minutes to find the answers, I should write it up.

Background: After seeing a link to http://unfuckyourhabitat.tumblr.com/ , I was reminded that I was trying to set up a maintenance schedule for myself at home... I like lists, but the physical list I have just hasn't been working for me - too many different timelines for doing tasks and not enough randomness: I'd just always end up skipping the same things in favour of tasks I enjoy doing more. So, I thought I'd try making myself a spreadsheet to give me a bit more flexibility in timing & also a randomizer that would put something to the top of my list.

I was going to just set it up on one of my computers, but then I thought it'd be useful if I could grab it easily from the tablet as well... so why not try Google Drive's spreadsheet function? Yeah, it'll go down when the internet is down, which sucks, but I still thought I'd try it. Frankly, none of my computers even have the same version of open/libre office on them, so portability of scripts would have been tough if I didn't do it this way.

So, I set up my spreadsheet to do what I wanted it to do... and then realized that the click throughs for sorting were a bit of a pain. I'd have to select the right range, Data > Sort Range, select that it has headers, select the right column, select descending, select a second column. Not the end of the world, but certainly not what I'd like it to be. First search, can I set up a different default sort? Survey says... no. Alright then. What about something like recording a macro in Excel, can I do that since I know exactly what the manual steps are? Google help says... no. Fine, so I need to write a script in their language.

The script: This script should have been the simplest example in the world, but it was bloody hard to find anything in the google help. My frustration perhaps shows in the comments.

// For actually useful help files, start here: 
//    https://developers.google.com/apps-script/reference/spreadsheet/

function sortMaintenanceList() { 
  // Note: to call from a spreadsheet, use the function name "sortMaintenanceList()" 
  // without any reference to the file name.  To clip this to a button, make a
  // shape (Insert -> Drawing ...) - I like to use a textbox with a background
  // colour - and then right click, select the drop down arrow and Assign Script.
  //
  // I don't cotton to these "write everything in one line" ideas. Write readable 
  // code, it makes it more accessible *and* you don't hate yourself later.
  
  // This is how you select your current sheet, so that you can actually run sheet 
  // functions. You'll need to give the app permissions to access your google drive 
  // the first time.
  
  currentSheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet().getActiveSheet()
  
  // Here I'm selecting the range I want.  In this case, I'm starting at cell(2,2) 
  // in order to not select my row 1 headers or my column 1 numbers. Most times,
  // you'll probably want to start at 2,1 (ie, row 2, column 1) because normal
  // people don't want to skip column 1.
  //
  // The second half is to select to the last row and the last column, so that even
  // if I expand the sheet to add more, it'll still grab it all.  There are also
  // range versions of this sheet function.  Note: for some reason, it wanted the
  // extra brackets.  It still seemed to work, but threw an error without them.
  
  usefulRange = currentSheet.getRange(2,2,(currentSheet.getLastRow()),(currentSheet.getLastColumn()))
  
  // Now sort it.  The sort function from range works differently than the sort
  // from sheet, because apparently consistency is for chumps. Here I'm sorting
  // first by column 7 (note: this is absolute in the sheet, even though I have
  // a smaller range selected), decending, secondarily by column 8, ascending.
  
  usefulRange.sort([{column: 7, ascending: false}, {column: 8, ascending: true}])
}

This is simple enough (and yes, could all be one line of code if I hated future-me), but geez, it was not easy to find quickly via searches. -1 useability, google... the first help pages you sent me to were completely unhelpful. It wasn't even clear where to go to get the class/function definitions, let alone having any useful examples to get me situated. I would think I'd be part of the target audience (familiar with Excel macros and ready to try switching over), but it was cringe-worthy trying to get to this.

If you're curious about my document, I'm totally willing to send it along - I just didn't feel like cleaning it up for public consumption right now.

The Jennifer Morgue is the second-ish book in the Laundry Files series by Charles Stross. I previously reviewed the first one and quite enjoyed it... this one, less so. By the by, I'm tagging by author at the bottom of posts now to make it easier to hop back to old related reviews. Not quite as classy as finding the link and adding it in the post itself, but it's something.

The central conceit in this book is that it's supposed to play out like a Bond film - they're under a magical geas that forces it to. Although I didn't mind the "twist" (spoiler: turns out the nerdy main character is not a good Bond type), Bond tropes aren't a thing I really enjoy at all, and there was too much of that and too little of the math-summons-monsters interest of the previous book. It's hard not to feel like this book is a skeezy wish fulfillment story for most of it, although it did pick up a bit at the end.

I recently saw someone comment that Stross is hit or miss - worth reading if someone recommends a book specifically, but don't try to read his whole catalog. I think I'm in agreement and won't be continuing with this series.

Brute Strength is the 19th (!) book in the Holly Winter's series, aka, the dog mysteries with the malamutes. I suspect I haven't read every book, but I must have read a lot of them. I think we slowed down on them because the reintroduction of the characters became too repetitive, but having been away from the series a while now, I didn't feel that way about this book.

Interestingly, if you didn't know this was a mystery series, you could read about halfway through this book before it ever became clear to you - up to then it's just a book about some dogs and their people. The main character, as usual, talks and thinks about dogs a lot, and I bemusedly related to the tendency to greet the dog before the owner. If you know it's a mystery series, you can guess a lot more, but I didn't find it too distracting. M may have thought I was a bit odd as I predicted the plot of the book at him, though.

The mystery and wrap up was a little abrupt and far fetched, as you might expect for this sort of cozy. I didn't mind - it was good fun and a pleasant break from the other novel I've been reading and putting down constantly.

This Thing of Darkness is the 7th in the Inspector Green mystery series.

The books continue to be well written mysteries, but this one felt... staged. The author really seems to want to tie in all her main characters in every book, and directly to the mystery, such that it's honestly getting a bit repetitive. Inspector Green is Jewish, so of course there's a connection to the Jewish community (the victim, who also reminds him of his ailing father, because that's another thing she likes to mention all the time)... his wife is a nurse at the mental hospital, so the suspect is a patient at said hospital...

I don't know. It didn't feel good. It felt like watching a TV show - where you can predict what's happening just based on "this person had a speaking role" or "they mentioned this unnecessarily". I don't normally feel too strongly about it, but it grated on this one.