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Eden: The Game - Build Your Village!

Games and Stickers

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"What if we could start again?” Find out for yourself in this, the official game of the series,...

Mountain Weather UK

Weather and Sports

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Mountain Weather UK (MWUK) is the Ultimate Mountain Weather Application dedicated to providing...

ClareR (5726 KP) rated The Gloaming in Books

May 2, 2018 (Updated May 2, 2018)

The Gloaming

Kirsty Logan | 2018 | Fiction & Poetry, LGBTQ+, Science Fiction/Fantasy

10.0

(1 Ratings)

Book Rating

A grown up fairy tale

This is a story which weaves the fantastical and the real together so well. It's set on a small, remote Scottish island, where the people there believe in selkies and turn to stone on a cliff top looking out to the ocean, when they die.
Mara Ross and her family live in a run down castle, that they never quite manage to repair. After her little brothers death, Mara leaves the island with Pearl, who she often refers to as a mermaid or a selkie (it's her job, actually).
This is a story of love, loss, hope, return and growing up. Fairy tales are used as a way of illustrating gender roles and how they have changed. This all sounds far too 'dry' though. This story is written in such lyrical, wistful language. It's beautiful. I could carry on reading it for another 200 pages. You're never quite sure what's real and what's fairy tale - and that's O.K.
And for the record, I like that there's no definite ending. I think that works really well with the rest of the novel.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher.

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Sarah (7798 KP) rated Geostorm (2017) in Movies

Jul 9, 2018 (Updated Jul 9, 2018)

Geostorm (2017)

2017 | Action, Mystery, Sci-Fi

6.4

(29 Ratings)

Movie Rating

Ruined by awful dialogue

Let's face it, you never begin any film with Gerard Butler in with high expectations, but this one was surprisingly better than I'd expected.

This is probably the best I've ever seen Butler act. His American accent was impressively good by his standards and only once did I hear him slip into his native Scottish. The rest of the cast are alright, but they've got little to work with what with poor character motivations and the even poorer script. The effects are very good, although the plot itself is potentially a little too farfetched and has The Day After Tomorrow meets Armageddon written all over it. Indeed I was very surprised to see that this wasn't actually made by Roland Emmerich.

A few plot nuances aside, the main issue with this is the dialogue. It's absolutely atrocious, to the point where I was visibly cringing throughout the film. Its not good when a film makes you embarrassed for the script writer. If it hadn't been for this, i probably would've rated this a lot higher as it was surprisingly enjoyable, even if it did raise a few unintentional laughs.