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Frankissstein
10.0
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***LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2019*** From 'one of the most gifted writers working today'...
Literary Fiction
Mrs. Claus and the Trouble with Turkeys
10.0
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It’s year-round Christmas cheer in this creative and witty mystery series featuring a unique...
Mark @ Carstairs Considers (2434 KP) rated Murder by the Seashore in Books
Oct 19, 2023
Murder Under the Pier
Scarlett Gardner is living her dream. She’s moved to Oceanside, California, and she’s opened a bookshop right on the beach. She’s opened in time for tourist season, and business is beginning to pick up. Unfortunately, a pre-work walk on the beach ends when Scarlett finds a woman dead under the pier. She recognizes the woman as her last customer the day before, but she assumes after she gives a statement to the police that her involvement is done. The next day, she finds herself pulled back into the case in a surprising way. Can she figure out what is really going on?
The premise of this one called to me with the beach and bookstore setting. I felt at home right away with Scarlett and the rest of the regulars. The plot pulled me in. It is more event heavy rather than investigation heavy (I prefer a good mix), but there were still times the events kept me reading longer than I should have. And yes, the setting is fun since I have spent some time in Oceanside on a regular basis. I hope this series runs for a long time. If you are looking for a great new cozy series, look no further.
The premise of this one called to me with the beach and bookstore setting. I felt at home right away with Scarlett and the rest of the regulars. The plot pulled me in. It is more event heavy rather than investigation heavy (I prefer a good mix), but there were still times the events kept me reading longer than I should have. And yes, the setting is fun since I have spent some time in Oceanside on a regular basis. I hope this series runs for a long time. If you are looking for a great new cozy series, look no further.
Lyndsey Gollogly (2893 KP) rated A House of Bells in Books
Jan 9, 2024
7 of 220
Kindle
A House of Bells
By J.T. Croft
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
A woman haunted by fate, a child silenced by fear, and a house full of secrets and bells.
1918. Stripped of her reputation and haunted by a spirit she failed to protect, the young governess Grace Meadows finds herself out of time and growing more and more desperate. But when she’s offered a strange job from an eccentric medium, she never could have imagined what she was signing up for.
Tasked with caring for a troubled young girl who has lost the ability to speak, Grace must unravel the dangerous secrets at the heart of a run-down country mansion and find the source of the horrors which now threaten both of their lives.
As she’s forced to confront her own demons and reconcile the ghosts of past and present, can Grace protect the child from the living and dead? And what is waiting for her beyond the mysterious silk and bells which protect them from forces unseen?
This was a haughtily beautiful gothic horror. It was so well written. The characters were endearing and dislikeable when needed. I’m glad to have found this author and looking forward to reading more.
Kindle
A House of Bells
By J.T. Croft
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
A woman haunted by fate, a child silenced by fear, and a house full of secrets and bells.
1918. Stripped of her reputation and haunted by a spirit she failed to protect, the young governess Grace Meadows finds herself out of time and growing more and more desperate. But when she’s offered a strange job from an eccentric medium, she never could have imagined what she was signing up for.
Tasked with caring for a troubled young girl who has lost the ability to speak, Grace must unravel the dangerous secrets at the heart of a run-down country mansion and find the source of the horrors which now threaten both of their lives.
As she’s forced to confront her own demons and reconcile the ghosts of past and present, can Grace protect the child from the living and dead? And what is waiting for her beyond the mysterious silk and bells which protect them from forces unseen?
This was a haughtily beautiful gothic horror. It was so well written. The characters were endearing and dislikeable when needed. I’m glad to have found this author and looking forward to reading more.
The Last Line
7.0
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Featuring a neurodiverse lead living with Tourette's syndrome, Ellie Marlowe is ready for a curtain...
Mothergamer (1598 KP) rated the PC version of Dead Island in Video Games
Apr 3, 2019
I really wanted to love Dead Island. After seeing many fantastic pictures and reading up about the game months before it came out, I was excited. Friends and family know I am very much a zombie fan. Ever since that Halloween night when I was 12, and watched Romero's Night Of The Living Dead, I have genuinely enjoyed all forms of zombie multimedia. Some of it has been great, some of it filled with schlock, and some of it just plain fun. So I was excited about Dead Island and had high hopes for it. Some of my expectations were met, but others not so much. This included the discovery that the game is in the first person view (I have issues with vertigo and first person view games), but I found that I could play the game for short periods of time because the camera did not bounce around the way it does for so many other first person games I've experienced. There are good things about this game, but there are bad things as well.
Welcome To Paradise!
You start the game with the setting of what appears to be a tropical island paradise, Banoi. However, if you look closer, you'll notice the blood on the walls, in the sand, and in the swimming pools. Look even closer, and you'll see the zombies munching on corpses. Dead Island while appearing to be a first person shooter, is more than that. Sure there is shooting in it, but there are also a myriad of other weapons such as oars, cars, and molotov cocktails. Dead Island is more of a schlock filled action role playing game that plays heavily on grisly melee combat. The resort is not the only place you explore. You can go even further inland into city and jungle settings, while doing favors for survivors on the island. The maps are excellent and there is even a handy shortcut function, where you can click on the map and go back to a previous location without having to run through a zombie horde. There are also plenty of weapons that you can improvise, making them quite deadly to the zombie menace. The four player online co-op is pretty good and gives you a chance to survive a zombie horde fight for the more difficult quests.
Just a girl and her axe, waiting for some zombies.
The majority of your time on Banoi is spent exploring and foraging for items for weapons and supplies. In co-op mode, this can work very well with a couple of people fighting off the zombies, while the others get things like fuel for the vehicles. You can also have fun with the leveling grind, running zombies over with various automobiles and watch the points tally up. You can easily put twenty hours into this game with all the questing, exploring, and zombie slaying and it is fun trying all the different melee choices out. My personal favorite was driving a big truck and running zombies over.
Hungry Tourists.
Now we get to the bad. While there are only a few minor flaws with the game, it definitely made a difference in the game play and the story. Now I'm not saying for a fun schlock zombie game I need a gripping emotional story, but the story must be good. Dead Island gives you a very threadbare story and the characters backgrounds are rather weakly written. This is a reflection on the writers. They could have written the characters better and fleshed out the story more, but they chose to do it this way although I am not sure why. The voice acting is also not great, with monotone emotionless voices. Do the characters even care that they could get eaten by zombies? I get the impression that they don't with that flat tone in their voice acting. Clunky controls and awkward combat can make you frustrated. It can be off putting when you're fighting off a wave of zombies and trying to make the camera turn the way you want it to so you can at least see what you're fighting. The game would also benefit from a better block and dodge option during combat. The quality of the visuals isn't even. The environmental graphics on the resort are great and the jungle environments as well, but the character and npc animation is poor and as you progress towards the end of the game it comes across as the bare minimum at best.
The last issue I have with Dead Island is the lack of regard for the solo player. There isn't an offline co-op option so you can play with friends you have over. It's as if they didn't even consider the possibility that people would want to play offline with friends and only have the online option. While I appreciate their reliable system for online play, I still would have liked the option to play offline with others if I chose.
Overall, Dead Island is a good game, but not a perfect one. It had a lot of potential, but the execution of those ideas was severely lacking. You're better off just waiting for it to go on sale really cheap or just rent it.
Welcome To Paradise!
You start the game with the setting of what appears to be a tropical island paradise, Banoi. However, if you look closer, you'll notice the blood on the walls, in the sand, and in the swimming pools. Look even closer, and you'll see the zombies munching on corpses. Dead Island while appearing to be a first person shooter, is more than that. Sure there is shooting in it, but there are also a myriad of other weapons such as oars, cars, and molotov cocktails. Dead Island is more of a schlock filled action role playing game that plays heavily on grisly melee combat. The resort is not the only place you explore. You can go even further inland into city and jungle settings, while doing favors for survivors on the island. The maps are excellent and there is even a handy shortcut function, where you can click on the map and go back to a previous location without having to run through a zombie horde. There are also plenty of weapons that you can improvise, making them quite deadly to the zombie menace. The four player online co-op is pretty good and gives you a chance to survive a zombie horde fight for the more difficult quests.
Just a girl and her axe, waiting for some zombies.
The majority of your time on Banoi is spent exploring and foraging for items for weapons and supplies. In co-op mode, this can work very well with a couple of people fighting off the zombies, while the others get things like fuel for the vehicles. You can also have fun with the leveling grind, running zombies over with various automobiles and watch the points tally up. You can easily put twenty hours into this game with all the questing, exploring, and zombie slaying and it is fun trying all the different melee choices out. My personal favorite was driving a big truck and running zombies over.
Hungry Tourists.
Now we get to the bad. While there are only a few minor flaws with the game, it definitely made a difference in the game play and the story. Now I'm not saying for a fun schlock zombie game I need a gripping emotional story, but the story must be good. Dead Island gives you a very threadbare story and the characters backgrounds are rather weakly written. This is a reflection on the writers. They could have written the characters better and fleshed out the story more, but they chose to do it this way although I am not sure why. The voice acting is also not great, with monotone emotionless voices. Do the characters even care that they could get eaten by zombies? I get the impression that they don't with that flat tone in their voice acting. Clunky controls and awkward combat can make you frustrated. It can be off putting when you're fighting off a wave of zombies and trying to make the camera turn the way you want it to so you can at least see what you're fighting. The game would also benefit from a better block and dodge option during combat. The quality of the visuals isn't even. The environmental graphics on the resort are great and the jungle environments as well, but the character and npc animation is poor and as you progress towards the end of the game it comes across as the bare minimum at best.
The last issue I have with Dead Island is the lack of regard for the solo player. There isn't an offline co-op option so you can play with friends you have over. It's as if they didn't even consider the possibility that people would want to play offline with friends and only have the online option. While I appreciate their reliable system for online play, I still would have liked the option to play offline with others if I chose.
Overall, Dead Island is a good game, but not a perfect one. It had a lot of potential, but the execution of those ideas was severely lacking. You're better off just waiting for it to go on sale really cheap or just rent it.
The Queen of the Damned (The Vampire Chronicles, #3)
9.0
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In 1976, a uniquely seductive world of vampires was unveiled in the now-classic Interview with the...
Hit So Hard: A Memoir
Book
A stunningly candid and inspiring memoir of recovery from addiction and the '90s, by Hole drummer...
Music biography
Gareth von Kallenbach (980 KP) rated Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017) in Movies
Jun 19, 2019
Johnny Depp returns as Capt. Jack Sparrow in the fifth outing for the “Pirates of the Caribbean” film franchise. Based on the phenomenally popular attraction at Disneyland and Walt Disney World; the latest film “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales” finds Jack and his crew once again at odds with British authorities in St. Maarten. Adding Jack’s troubles is a malevolent spirit from his past named Capt. Salazar (Javier Bardem), who seeks to return to the living by exacting his revenge upon Jack. Along for the adventure are a young man named Henry Turner (Brenton Thwaites), and a science minded woman named Carina (Kaya Scodelario), who all have their reasons for joining one another on the adventure despite ample levels of mistrust amongst them.
In keeping with the series all sorts of comedic hijinks mixed with action and the supernatural to give audiences a very noisy and destruction filled storyline.
While there is a decent amount of action in the film there were also large gaps where things just plod along which caused me to glance at my watch from time to time during the two-hour runtime of the film. Adding to the issues is the tendency of depth to slur and mumble his lines playing the frequently inebriated Capt. Jack which does hamper some of the better lines in the film.
Well I certainly enjoyed this one much better than the second and third films in the series I kept thinking that I have seen this all before and that this film was essentially a collection of some of the best moments from previous films combined into one. The end result is that I found myself saying that while I would not mind another outing in the series I would also be more than okay they decided to end the cinematic adventures with this film. Diehard fans will likely enjoy this new effort but more casual fans may not have as much patience this time around.
http://sknr.net/2017/05/25/pirates-caribbean-dead-men-tell-no-tales/
In keeping with the series all sorts of comedic hijinks mixed with action and the supernatural to give audiences a very noisy and destruction filled storyline.
While there is a decent amount of action in the film there were also large gaps where things just plod along which caused me to glance at my watch from time to time during the two-hour runtime of the film. Adding to the issues is the tendency of depth to slur and mumble his lines playing the frequently inebriated Capt. Jack which does hamper some of the better lines in the film.
Well I certainly enjoyed this one much better than the second and third films in the series I kept thinking that I have seen this all before and that this film was essentially a collection of some of the best moments from previous films combined into one. The end result is that I found myself saying that while I would not mind another outing in the series I would also be more than okay they decided to end the cinematic adventures with this film. Diehard fans will likely enjoy this new effort but more casual fans may not have as much patience this time around.
http://sknr.net/2017/05/25/pirates-caribbean-dead-men-tell-no-tales/
Dead Earth: Combat Shooter 3D
Games and Entertainment
App
Become the last hope of humanity in a dramatic war against rebellious machines. Shoot tons of...