Category Archives: Reviews

Reviews of books and movies

Eon by Greg Bear

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I’m not really a hard sci-fi guy.  I’m just not smart enough for all the science.  Reading this book made me feel a little bit dumb and was definitely a brain workout.  I also prefer to read books for their story and hard sci-fi has a tendency to pause the story to explain the science, I feel like.  Some people with more scientifically inclined brains enjoy it I am sure, but I am not a fan.  It probably didn’t help either that I kept getting distracted while reading it, especially in the beginning, so there were a number of things that probably would have made more sense had I not been distracted.  Although, despite all the science explanation, I still have questions, mainly how the Stone’s presence affects gravity on Earth if at all.
In terms of the actual writing, I am not a huge fan.  I don’t really like the point of view.  I like very limited third person and first person.  This was less limited.  It felt like it was following one person, but then it would be focused on another person only to revert back.  Again, it is a personal preference, but I did not really enjoy it.  The action felt removed at times, like we were disengaged and being told through an outside observer rather than being made a part of the story, they happen so matter-of-fact-ly.  Again, personal preference and the story wasn’t focused on the action, so it was understandable.  Some of the reactions and interactions didn’t feel real, however.  There were a few times I thought “no person ever would say that or be that cool.”  Maybe I just haven’t been around the right kind of people, but I was doubting.
The story was good.  It was a step away from my usual conflict and war-based stories, but It was pretty good.  There didn’t really seem to be a whole lot of buildup throughout, which felt a little off, but, again, it might just be that I kept getting distracted, so I wasn’t fully engaged in the story.  The beginning of the book and the end are very different.  So much happens throughout.  That is a little overwhelming and makes some of the major events feel less important, they are just kind of drowned out.  
Overall, not really my kind of book, but it was good.  If you enjoy hard sci-fi, then I’d say read it.  If you don’t like hard sci-fi, it is your choice.

Ruin by John Gwynne

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I had a long enough break between the last book and this one to reengage fully with the story and I enjoyed it all the way through this book.  It was pretty unrealistic at times, aside from the obvious fantasy elements.  The biggest example of this was the remarkable timing.  There were many times when certain events happened at just the right time, such as two groups of people meeting up just in time to join a battle that was all but lost.  But those were forgivable, as the story as a whole was still enjoyable.  I very much admire Gwynne’s ability to have all these different storylines and characters moving alongside each other and have them come affect each other and come together.  With this book, a lot of the stories converged and the overall story built significantly.  Very exciting and kept me up three hours too late last night so I could finish.
The actual writing is much the same as the first two books.  Still different than I am used to, but it is usually clear.  He does still have a habit of restating things.  Sometimes I understand why he does, it is from a different character’s POV, but it often offers no new information and I’m left thinking “we already know this.”  His use of thoughts still bugs me.  I am not a fan of direct thoughts in most instances anyway, but his use sometimes has no apparent use.  It often feels like the thoughts were added after the fact, restating something word for word.  And there is so much of it some places.  A few pages are half italicized and it feels off and distracts from the story.
Overall, I very much liked the book.  I do have some issues with how it is written, but they do little to detract from my enjoyment.  I still recommend the series and look forward to the next book. 

Suicide Squad

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Meh.  You have to see it, but it wasn’t great.  It had such great potential, but fell so short.  The story was flat and detached.  It felt more like someone telling you what happened rather than immersing you in it for most of the movie.  And much of the dialogue was forced and cheesy.  Like seriously, unless you character is intentionally goofy or uses cliches in a funny manner, don’t have them say “join me or die.”  That is just about the stupidest line a villain can say. And that was definitely not the only bad line.  

And the characters, most of them were fairly one-dimensional and kinda dumb.  Most of the actors did a great job with what they had to work with, but what they had to work with was not great.  Harley Quinn had such potential, and while still entertaining, she fell short of what she could have been.  Too much effort put into her sex appeal and crazy when she could have been a much deeper character.  You saw pieces of the deeper character, but they often felt out of place and just an aside rather than the focus they should have been.  Margot Robbie did the best she could with the character, but she could have done so much more had her role been written well.  Deadshot was done a bit better, but still had some room for improvement (Will Smith did a great job though).  Diablo was kind of stereotyped, but he had some depth.  Boomerang was fairly flat.  Entertaining, but flat.  I did like Killer Croc though.  Enchantress was the worst.  She could have been a good character, but she had the worst lines and was just not done real well.  And probably was acted the worst.  Most of them had great acting, but hers was a bit below the rest.  I’m not going to go into the rest except to say that Amanda Waller was probably the best and was wonderfully played by Viola Davis.
And then there’s the way the movie was shot.  Too much slow motion and too much emphasis on style.  Great cinematography can be put into a movie without a hundred slow motion shots saying “look at this awesome shot we’re filming.”  And then there were a decent number of scenes where it wasn’t clear what happened or how a character got from point A to point B, which was a bit distracting.  Then there were just some unnecessary shots that really served no purpose.  Like, I like the shot of all the casings falling at their feet as much as the next guy, but I think I’ve seen it enough and really don’t need it to understand that their using a lot of ammo.  Just show me what they’re shooting or what the more interesting characters are doing.  Or move on with the story rather than just showing five minutes of shooting gallery.  We get it, the enemy are mindless drones and the heroes are untouchable.  Next scene please.  Okay, that may be an overeaction, the scene is question wasn’t too bad and went a long way toward establishing what the characters can do and even who they are, but it wasn’t perfect.

So the acting was great for the most part, and the story and characters had some real potential, but the movie just kinda flopped.  These new DC movies are just a bit of a disappointment.  They make me long for the Dark Knight trilogy again.  At least the tv shows are starting up again fairly soon, they at least are pretty good.  I really hope Wonder Woman is better.  It looks amazing, but so did this movie.  Forgive my rambling.  Go see this one, but leave your expectations low. 

Valor by John Gwynne

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Pretty good.  Maybe not as good as the first one, but good.  It felt a bit long.  I liked the slow buildup in the first one, but by the end of this one I was getting a little tired of the story.  Going to continue reading them, but I definitely have to take a break before the next one.  There were more exciting events in this one I feel like, but they seemed a little overshadowed and rushed and the story is just going a little long maybe.  It is still enjoyable and I’m sure it won’t bother some people, but I was getting exhausted with it.  And I must say, the number of limbs that get severed and sparks that fly from swords in these books is incredible.  They really should get more calcium and I wonder if they decided flint was a good material for making swords with.

The writing itself is the same as the first one.  Not how I like to write and sometimes confusing to read, but not too bad.  There are times when it isn’t clear who is doing the action or talking and he sometimes seems to write exactly how he would think or say it, but it comes off as sounding a little weird and sometimes confusing.  There are some times when he repeats things and I can’t get past the fact that he just said it, it pulls me out of the story.  Then I found a decent amount of typos.  Mostly missing quotation marks, but a couple of other punctuation and spelling errors.  They could have benefitted from another careful look.

So I just listed everything bad with it.  I still enjoyed it and will continue with the series and if you enjoy fantasy epics, this series is great.  Everything good I said in my review for Malice still applies, I just started getting a little bored.  But I have a fairly short attention span, especially when it comes to stories, so you may not run into that problem.  Don’t let me scare you from these books.  If the size of them doesn’t, then my review shouldn’t.

 

Jason Bourne

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Pretty good.  Felt like a Bourne film.  Maybe too much, like a lot of it felt kina recycled.  Luckily I enjoyed the others immensely, so that isn’t all bad.  It was fast paced and kinda hard to follow, just like the others.  It had mind games and epic car chases and fist fights and people you’re not sure whose side they’re on.  Basically everything the others had.  Even the soundtrack was basically the same.  So in short, it was basically just like the others with little new to offer.  But since I enjoyed the others, I liked this one.

It was good to see Matt Damon back as Bourne and the new additions of Alicia Vikander an Tommy Lee Jones made for a great cast with good acting.  And with Paul Greengrass directing again, it kept the exciting, slightly confused but enjoyable feel of the latter installments of the original trilogy.

So really, it didn’t feel any different from the last couple, but was enjoyable nonetheless.  Maybe if they do another they can bring something new to the table but I’m not too disappointed that we didn’t get that this time.  If you enjoyed the originals, then you will probably enjoy this one as well.

Malice by John Gwynne

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One of my favorite books.  The definition of fantasy.  A great epic with magic and creatures and battles and deception.  The story is gripping right to the end, although the main conflict doesn’t start until near the end.  I have always been one for jumping straight into the conflict, but this one worked well doing it differently.  There are plenty of smaller conflicts to keep you occupied while the main one builds slowly, looming in the background and over the characters’ heads.  And the characters, they are amazing.  Each is unique and well-rounded and grows throughout, their development is wonderful.  The world is complex and deep, obviously having been well thought out ahead of time.

The writing itself wasn’t perfect.  He has a tendency to run on with his sentences and that, combined with his way of putting things led to some confusion.  He also loves his italics.  I’ve said before that I don’t really like using italics, particularly for emphasis, and he did that.  A lot.  Sometimes it felt like he was trying to emphasize every other word.  It was too much.  But overall, the writing melted away as the story gripped me, as it should.

This book gave me a lot to think about for my own writing and worldbuilding.  I actually started planning another story, or, rather, changed and expanded on one I had, thanks to this.  The actual plot of the story has nothing to do with Malice, but I am very inspired by how the plot unfolded and how we get to observe it.

This is a very short review compared to what it should be, but I stayed up way too late to finish the book.  I made notes throughout my reading and consolidated the main points here, but there is more I could say if I really wanted to get into it, but the main point is that I loved the slow building, yet gripping story.  I just ordered the next two books in the series and wait eagerly for them to show up on my doorstep.  I definitely recommend this book to any and all fantasy lovers.

Survival by Devon C Ford

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Not my favorite. 2/5. Maybe 3/5. To start, the prologue. It should not have been titled “prologue.” It was chapter 1. There was absolutely no reason for it to be called a prologue. Same with the epilogue. They were part of the story. This is a superficial thing to complain about as it really doesn’t really affect the book, but it bugs me.

Next, the writing. It clearly didn’t have a professional editor go over it. Numerous typos and mistakes that should have been caught. It felt almost like I was reading a first draft. And that’s just the beginning. He split up a single character’s dialogue over multiple paragraphs when he really shouldn’t have, which confused me during every conversation as I tried to figure out who was talking. He was also really bad about not using names when he should have. He’d use ‘he’ throughout a scene, but have multiple men and it often wasn’t clear which one he was referring to.

The tone felt a bit confused at times as well. Sometimes it felt very lighthearted, which didn’t match what was happening, which can sometimes work, but it didn’t this time. Sometimes the narration was dark, but the dialogue was joking, and they didn’t blend well. The dialogue also often felt forced and out of place.

His use of POV characters was sloppy as well. He followed a single character most of the time, but sometimes would be following him, then suddenly we’re witnessing a conversation that he had left. Then we’re following another character with no clear indication that he made a switch, which would leave me confused for a moment. There were a couple of times that he switched POV characters completely and obviously, but the switch served no purpose and the story wouldn’t have changed if he had left out that chapter and let that character disappear again without putting him so much into the spotlight first.

The story itself wasn’t too bad. A bit slow. It had very few exciting or even interesting moments. Most of the book was setting up a camp after the apocalypse, which itself wasn’t even exciting. Most of it was common sense and stuff we’ve seen happen a hundred times at the beginnings of stories. And that was the whole book. It did get exciting at the end. The very end. There was no resolution. I understand that it is the start of a series, but there should still be resolution. Every book in the series should complete the story arc, not end at the top just for the sake of a cliffhanger. There has to be resolution after the climax. This story ended practically in the middle of the climax.

It wasn’t all bad though. I did like the characters by the end (though at first I couldn’t care less about them), and each character was unique. The story did have some good points. There was the occasional idea that was unique from other post-apocalyptic stories and it was interesting seeing so much detail going into the setup of the new society, even if it did get boring.

So yeah, not real great, but not horrible. I complain more than I praise because I think more about what’s wrong than what’s right while I read. That’s mainly because I’m focusing so much on figuring out what not to do in my writing and it’s easier to point out what’s wrong. Someone who isn’t a writer may not find issue with as much as I have. But I wasn’t a huge fan. I may read the rest of the series, but probably not. I have a new stack of freshly obtained books that I’m more interested in to read.

Bloodline by Claudia Gray

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Very much enjoyed this one.  Like Lost Stars, it wasn’t horribly action-exciting, but didn’t once lose my attention.  Despite there not being a lot of action, it didn’t feel slow at all.  It was very interesting seeing the politics of the New Republic, which we got none of in the movie.  I enjoyed the characters as well, both the new ones and the known ones.  The characters brought in from the movies felt true and I liked seeing them in another time and position.

The writing was very much the same as Lost Stars.  Some of the style I still don’t prefer, but it worked.  It’s well done, just not how I like.  But it didn’t detract from my enjoyment at all.  I don’t really have much else to say, as I was too invested in reading it to put much effort into analyzing it.  That in itself is a good sign that it is a good read.

Lost Stars by Claudia Gray

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I definitely enjoyed this one.  Early on I had some issues with how it was written, but that disappeared as I kept reading.  I felt that the writing was geared more toward a young audience (despite the story feeling geared toward a slightly older audience), that it was dumbed down.  It stated the obvious.  It used italics and such in the way I did when I first started out writing, but have come to dislike.  But as I kept reading, I didn’t really notice it as much.  It could be that there as an actual change in the writing as the characters aged, or I could have gotten so invested in the story that I stopped noticing.  The latter is certainly believable.

The story was not overly exciting for most of it, but it definitely kept me enthralled.  I very much enjoy reading Star Wars stories and seeing the events of the movies from different angles.  It was nice to see different perspectives and the events between and beyond what we see in the movies.  I am still disappointed with the discarding of the EU, but I am also excited to keep up with these new stories.  The characters and plot were fairly predictable (partially because it ran parallel to the movies until the end), but not so much that it wasn’t interesting. 

Between that interest and my excess of downtime, this was about the fastest I have read a book in a long time.  Definitely recommended for all Star Wars fans.

EDDA by Conor Kostick

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This one was alright.  Not as good as the first of the series, but alright.  The story was fairly interesting, but nothing too amazing.  The danger didn’t feel very real for most of the story.  Magic, as usual, is cheap and overpowered.  I also didn’t really feel as invested in the characters this time, especially the returning ones.  I’ve kind of grown bored of them and they didn’t really develop much more in this one.

The writing itself was similar to the other two in the series, nothing remarkable.  He repeated things that didn’t need repeating fairly often and sometimes told what he had already spent a few sentences showing, ruining the effect.  He also gravitates more toward saying things explicitly, rather than leaving us to infer, which sometimes makes me feel like he thinks I’m stupid.  Which would be okay for a young age group, which is who most of it is written for, but then he has a habit of using unnecessarily intelligent words.  I had to use the dictionary a few times and I am older than his target audience and read the dictionary for fun.  Again, this isn’t always a bad thing if the word is the best choice, but there were times when a more common word would have worked just as well.

Overall, I’m glad I’m done.  The series started off well and immediately went downhill, as so many do.  I am debating whether I want to read his other book or not.  I definitely will be reading others before it if I do.