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Riders of Justice (2020)
Riders of Justice (2020)
2020 | Action, Comedy, Drama
8
8.0 (1 Ratings)
Movie Rating
Danish revenge thriller. A veteran soldier teams up with a gang of geeks to find the man responsible for his wife's death. Looks like yet another attempt at something like a Liam Neeson movie, but this is much defter and funnier, and more emotionally articulate.

Great performance from Mikkelson, playing the straight man as he is surrounded by comic performances from his various sidekicks - but this is a serious film about grief and how the world works and how people attempt to make sense of this. The director manages to slide the film from farce to thriller to drama without any of the changes in tone jarring in the slightest, even if the plot is a bit reliant on the occasional contrivance. Lots of fun but also undeniably moving.
  
Down Every Road by Merle Haggard
Down Every Road by Merle Haggard
1996 | Country
5
5.0 (1 Ratings)
Album Rating
Rolling Stone's 477th greatest "album" of all time
First off, since when was a 4-disc anthology considered an album?!
If there was a country version of the old "infinite monkeys with typewriters would eventually write Shakespeare" then I think I just listened to it. So many slightly different combinations of guitar and fiddle melodies, yet they never managed to recreate Jonny Cash.
Country really isn't my bag at all and I should never have listened to this.
Prior to this, my only knowledge of Merle Haggard was the Bloodhound Gang lyric "I was lonelier than Kunta Kinte at a Merle Haggard concert that night I strolled on into Uncle Limpy's Hump Palace lookin' for love", which I didn't understand until now. I wish it had stayed that way.
  
Six of Crows
Six of Crows
Leigh Bardugo | 2016 | Science Fiction/Fantasy, Young Adult (YA)
10
9.2 (45 Ratings)
Book Rating
Amazing duology
Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom are a duology set in Leigh Bardugo's Grishaverse. Grisha being the magic users in her world. I haven't read the rest of the Grishaverse (Shadow and Bone, Siege and Storm, and Ruin and Rising) - but I will definitely be doing so, because Crows and Crooked Kingdom are AMAZING.

I was pretty surprised - normally books rotating between several viewpoints are confusing, but Bardugo handles the transitions seamlessly and unmistakably. I was never unsure of what character I was reading - each one really had their own unique voice. I also loved that she worked in an LGBT romance without it being in any way odd. No one in the novel found non-heterosexuality weird at all. It was treated just as matter of factly as opposite-sex romances, and I loved that.

Six of Crows opens on a gang being blackmailed into a job they don't want to do. I can totally see the gang has a D&D group - and the books definitely feel a bit like a D&D campaign, albeit one with a mostly experienced group and a very experienced DM.

You've got Kaz, the ringleader, who's an all-around great thief but a superb tactician.

Inej, the acrobat assassin.

Jesper, the marksman hiding his magic ability.

Wylan, the rich merchant's son on the outs with his father and fallen in with a bad crowd, and talented with demolitions.

Nina, the sexpot who wields magic, and has a love/hate relationship with Mathias, the barbarian who's spent his life hunting magic users but is irresistibly attracted to Nina. (I can see the DM telling these two to hash out a background that will let them co-exist, which they obviously did.)

Each character has a complex back story that influences most of their actions, and different relationships with other members of the gang that also affects how they react. Their back stories don't just explain their actions in the books, people and events from their backgrounds also show up to complicate matters in the present. The wheels-within-wheels of the plotline is EXACTLY what I love about good political fantasies. The world-building is superb, and Bardugo has given just as much thought to the seedy underbelly of her world as she has the magic and politics.

I really, really loved this duology, and I see now why people rave about this universe. It is VERY well deserved.

You can find all my reviews at http://goddessinthestacks.wordpress.com
  
Crooked Kingdom
Crooked Kingdom
Leigh Bardugo | 2016 | Science Fiction/Fantasy, Young Adult (YA)
10
9.1 (22 Ratings)
Book Rating
Amazing duology
Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom are a duology set in Leigh Bardugo's Grishaverse. Grisha being the magic users in her world. I haven't read the rest of the Grishaverse (Shadow and Bone, Siege and Storm, and Ruin and Rising) - but I will definitely be doing so, because Crows and Crooked Kingdom are AMAZING.

I was pretty surprised - normally books rotating between several viewpoints are confusing, but Bardugo handles the transitions seamlessly and unmistakably. I was never unsure of what character I was reading - each one really had their own unique voice. I also loved that she worked in an LGBT romance without it being in any way odd. No one in the novel found non-heterosexuality weird at all. It was treated just as matter of factly as opposite-sex romances, and I loved that.

Six of Crows opens on a gang being blackmailed into a job they don't want to do. I can totally see the gang has a D&D group - and the books definitely feel a bit like a D&D campaign, albeit one with a mostly experienced group and a very experienced DM.

You've got Kaz, the ringleader, who's an all-around great thief but a superb tactician.

Inej, the acrobat assassin.

Jesper, the marksman hiding his magic ability.

Wylan, the rich merchant's son on the outs with his father and fallen in with a bad crowd, and talented with demolitions.

Nina, the sexpot who wields magic, and has a love/hate relationship with Mathias, the barbarian who's spent his life hunting magic users but is irresistibly attracted to Nina. (I can see the DM telling these two to hash out a background that will let them co-exist, which they obviously did.)

Each character has a complex back story that influences most of their actions, and different relationships with other members of the gang that also affects how they react. Their back stories don't just explain their actions in the books, people and events from their backgrounds also show up to complicate matters in the present. The wheels-within-wheels of the plotline is EXACTLY what I love about good political fantasies. The world-building is superb, and Bardugo has given just as much thought to the seedy underbelly of her world as she has the magic and politics.

I really, really loved this duology, and I see now why people rave about this universe. It is VERY well deserved.

You can find all my reviews at http://goddessinthestacks.wordpress.com