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Louise (64 KP) rated A Tyranny of Petticoats (A Tyranny of Petticoats, #1) in Books
Jul 2, 2018
A Tyranny of petticoats is an all female written anthology about badass females. The 15 stories consist of Pirates, Assassins, Ghosts and Robbers whilst covering relevant American history such as Gold mining, the slave trade and war.
The stories are written in historical order, starting from 1710-1968. These are my ratings for each story:
Mother Carey's table by J.Anderson Coats ⭐.5 stars
The Journey by Marie Lu ⭐⭐⭐stars
Madeleine's choice by Jessica Spotswood ⭐⭐⭐.5 stars
El Destinos by Leslye Walton ⭐⭐⭐stars
High Stakes by Andrea Cremer ⭐⭐⭐ stars
The Red Ravenue Ball by Caroline Tung Richmond ⭐⭐stars
Pearls by Beth Revis ⭐⭐⭐.5 stars
Gold in the roots of grass by Marissa Meyer ⭐⭐⭐⭐stars
The Legendary Garnet Girls by Y.S.Lee ⭐⭐⭐stars
The colour of the sky by Elizabeth Wein ⭐⭐⭐ stars
Bonnie and Clydebank by Sundra Mitchell ⭐⭐⭐stars
Hard times by Catherine Longshore ⭐⭐⭐stars
City of Angels by Lindsay Smith ⭐⭐⭐.5 stars
Pulse of the Panthers by Kekla Magoon ⭐⭐⭐ stars
The whole world is watching by Robin Talley ⭐⭐stars
I wanted to read this collection of short stories as I had heard great things about it. This book should have been ideal for me, it's feminist historical fiction. Sadly this didn't deliver, none of the stories blew me away. In actual fact I have a hard time remembering what the stories were about. Some of the stories felt like they were an excerpt from a novel, some felt rushed and others under developed.
However,I am glad I got to read this as I get to explore authors that I have not read before and got to sample their work and see if I get on with their writing styles.
The book also has a short note from the author as to why they picked the era, why they contributed to the anthology and so on. I definitely want to explore more novels with American history such as the gold mining and slavery thanks to these authors.
Overall I rated this 3 out of 5 stars
The stories are written in historical order, starting from 1710-1968. These are my ratings for each story:
Mother Carey's table by J.Anderson Coats ⭐.5 stars
The Journey by Marie Lu ⭐⭐⭐stars
Madeleine's choice by Jessica Spotswood ⭐⭐⭐.5 stars
El Destinos by Leslye Walton ⭐⭐⭐stars
High Stakes by Andrea Cremer ⭐⭐⭐ stars
The Red Ravenue Ball by Caroline Tung Richmond ⭐⭐stars
Pearls by Beth Revis ⭐⭐⭐.5 stars
Gold in the roots of grass by Marissa Meyer ⭐⭐⭐⭐stars
The Legendary Garnet Girls by Y.S.Lee ⭐⭐⭐stars
The colour of the sky by Elizabeth Wein ⭐⭐⭐ stars
Bonnie and Clydebank by Sundra Mitchell ⭐⭐⭐stars
Hard times by Catherine Longshore ⭐⭐⭐stars
City of Angels by Lindsay Smith ⭐⭐⭐.5 stars
Pulse of the Panthers by Kekla Magoon ⭐⭐⭐ stars
The whole world is watching by Robin Talley ⭐⭐stars
I wanted to read this collection of short stories as I had heard great things about it. This book should have been ideal for me, it's feminist historical fiction. Sadly this didn't deliver, none of the stories blew me away. In actual fact I have a hard time remembering what the stories were about. Some of the stories felt like they were an excerpt from a novel, some felt rushed and others under developed.
However,I am glad I got to read this as I get to explore authors that I have not read before and got to sample their work and see if I get on with their writing styles.
The book also has a short note from the author as to why they picked the era, why they contributed to the anthology and so on. I definitely want to explore more novels with American history such as the gold mining and slavery thanks to these authors.
Overall I rated this 3 out of 5 stars
Emma @ The Movies (1786 KP) rated Black Water: Abyss (2020) in Movies
Aug 22, 2020
I don't know how I've never seen Black Water, but I saw the trailer for Abyss and it caught my eye so I'll be going back to check the first one out as they're usually better.
When Cash finds a cave while out searching for two missing hikers he invites his friends to explore it with him. Deep in the cave system they come upon a cavern, as they look around they're suddenly hit by a torrent of water and become trapped by the rising water... and they might not be alone.
Where to start... I love creature features, at this point that's common knowledge, but there are some that make me a little sad. Black Water: Abyss might be one of those. It has all the potential but somehow it wasn't engaging, perhaps it took itself a little too seriously?
It suffered from excessive length, or rather the perception of length as it had a runtime of just 1 hour 38 minutes. It felt a lot longer. 98 minutes would be a perfect length for this sort of film but this dragged on and on.
There's a tried and tested formula: group gets trapped, there's peril, group have to escape, most die or at least get maimed. 47 Meters Down, Deep Blue Sea, Crawl... I won't go on. It's a simple story that so many films before have done, it shouldn't have been hard to recreate.
The actors are all good. Luke Mitchell (Blindspot) and Jessica McNamee (The Meg) were both faces I recognised and their previous roles sat positively with me. They play Jen and Eric who are a happy couple on the surface but the tension builds, they work well together. Anthony J Sharpe as Cash givens off some heavy Murdock vibes, the slightly crazy character did lighten everything a little but I'm not sure if that's a good or a bad thing in the long run. Our other couple are Yolanda and Viktor (Amali Golden and Benjamin Hoetjes), they're made to be the opposites of Jen and Eric seemingly one particular line of dialogue in the middle. They didn't have the same presence but that wasn't really necessary.
CGI crocs. I'll give them some credit for the fact that there were a couple of shots where I couldn't say if they were CG, real or practical. For the most part though I wasn't excited by what I saw, there was a lot of eye and snout shots or just ripples in the water. The bigger shots were chaotic and mainly obscured by fast motion and water, when you do get a good view it doesn't gel with anything around it, the colourings in particular seem to be inconsistent with the light inside the cave.
There are a lot of leading shots that should help with suspense, but somehow don't. They're typical off-set characters with open space that make you think a croc is going to jump out, classic right? But it seems like they made a concerted effort to combat predictability by putting a few of those shots together and not using the first one for the scare... which had a negative effect for me. Part of the fun of these films is that you know something is coming and you can get a gratifying win from guessing what's going to happen, after a few thwarted attempts at that it became really frustrating and less than satisfying to watch.
Despite a lot of disappointment this isn't a bad film, swapping some of the drama for more action and giving the viewers a few "wins" would have easily made the runtime a bit more bearable. I did get a solid laugh out of it towards the end, perhaps it missed its calling as a comedy.
Originally posted on: https://emmaatthemovies.blogspot.com/2020/08/black-water-abyss-movie-review.html
When Cash finds a cave while out searching for two missing hikers he invites his friends to explore it with him. Deep in the cave system they come upon a cavern, as they look around they're suddenly hit by a torrent of water and become trapped by the rising water... and they might not be alone.
Where to start... I love creature features, at this point that's common knowledge, but there are some that make me a little sad. Black Water: Abyss might be one of those. It has all the potential but somehow it wasn't engaging, perhaps it took itself a little too seriously?
It suffered from excessive length, or rather the perception of length as it had a runtime of just 1 hour 38 minutes. It felt a lot longer. 98 minutes would be a perfect length for this sort of film but this dragged on and on.
There's a tried and tested formula: group gets trapped, there's peril, group have to escape, most die or at least get maimed. 47 Meters Down, Deep Blue Sea, Crawl... I won't go on. It's a simple story that so many films before have done, it shouldn't have been hard to recreate.
The actors are all good. Luke Mitchell (Blindspot) and Jessica McNamee (The Meg) were both faces I recognised and their previous roles sat positively with me. They play Jen and Eric who are a happy couple on the surface but the tension builds, they work well together. Anthony J Sharpe as Cash givens off some heavy Murdock vibes, the slightly crazy character did lighten everything a little but I'm not sure if that's a good or a bad thing in the long run. Our other couple are Yolanda and Viktor (Amali Golden and Benjamin Hoetjes), they're made to be the opposites of Jen and Eric seemingly one particular line of dialogue in the middle. They didn't have the same presence but that wasn't really necessary.
CGI crocs. I'll give them some credit for the fact that there were a couple of shots where I couldn't say if they were CG, real or practical. For the most part though I wasn't excited by what I saw, there was a lot of eye and snout shots or just ripples in the water. The bigger shots were chaotic and mainly obscured by fast motion and water, when you do get a good view it doesn't gel with anything around it, the colourings in particular seem to be inconsistent with the light inside the cave.
There are a lot of leading shots that should help with suspense, but somehow don't. They're typical off-set characters with open space that make you think a croc is going to jump out, classic right? But it seems like they made a concerted effort to combat predictability by putting a few of those shots together and not using the first one for the scare... which had a negative effect for me. Part of the fun of these films is that you know something is coming and you can get a gratifying win from guessing what's going to happen, after a few thwarted attempts at that it became really frustrating and less than satisfying to watch.
Despite a lot of disappointment this isn't a bad film, swapping some of the drama for more action and giving the viewers a few "wins" would have easily made the runtime a bit more bearable. I did get a solid laugh out of it towards the end, perhaps it missed its calling as a comedy.
Originally posted on: https://emmaatthemovies.blogspot.com/2020/08/black-water-abyss-movie-review.html