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Melissa Parsons (14 KP) rated The Hobbit in Books

Jul 10, 2018  
The Hobbit
The Hobbit
J.R.R. Tolkien | 1937 | Children
10
8.4 (144 Ratings)
Book Rating
Brilliant adventure (1 more)
Must read before Lord of the rings
Amazing novel
The Hobbit is another master piece but the now deceased master of fantasy: Tolkein. If you ever see the J. R. R Tolkein name on a novel your guaranteed for a ride that you will not want to get off. May be slow to start but that can be a good thing. I know this recently was made in to a movie series but I do wish that this had been done before Lord of The Rings as the Hobbit gives us the background and shows us Bilbo as a younger man. Now I’m not gonna give any spoilers as I believe it’s a novel best experienced yourself but I will say this: anyone afraid of spiders needs to be prepared cause this book does contain giant spiders in a part of it.

Buckle up, relax and enjoy the wonderful journey of a Hobbit.
  
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ClareR (5726 KP) rated The Silence Factory in Books

Jul 16, 2024  
The Silence Factory
The Silence Factory
Bridget Collins | 2024 | Fiction & Poetry, Mystery, Science Fiction/Fantasy
9
9.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
I’m an arachnophobe. I run from rooms when there’s a particularly large spider around - and I still loved this book. I have to admit, I did have to visualise them as chunkier and furrier with fewer legs. Web-weaving Jack Russells, if you will 🤦🏼‍♀️ But that’s the joy of reading!

A factory in Telverton seems to have acquired a particular breed of spider whose web, when spun into a silken fabric, can bring silence to the person/ people sitting inside. However, if the fabric is the other way round, it produces sounds that can make people go mad (they don’t make too much of that fact). So, no the best factory to work in, then!

I enjoyed the two timelines: the discovery of the spiders in 1820, told through the journals of Sophia Ashmore-Percy; and the manufacture of the silk in a factory town decades later along with an audiologist who goes to work for Sir Edward Ashmore-Percy. He has the task of helping Sir Ashmore-Percy’s deaf daughter to hear.

I love how Bridget Collins mixes historical fiction and fantasy, and makes it all seem perfectly reasonable. There’s a lot to be said in this story about taking advantage of people for profit (in the factory in particular) and how nature can be used for man’s own ends, regardless of the consequences. Humans aren’t painted in the best of light, and I actually felt sorry for the spiders 🕷️🕷️🕷️

Still don’t like spiders though.
  
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Ross (3284 KP) rated The Sea Watch in Books

Sep 13, 2017  
The Sea Watch
The Sea Watch
Adrian Tchaikovsky | 2017 | Science Fiction/Fantasy
5
7.5 (2 Ratings)
Book Rating
Similar to the preceding book of the series, this was a real slog. The action starts to hot up again, with the Spiders starting to show their true colours once more, however the story then moves underwater and slows to a crawl. There is little of this book that adds to the whole series, other than the link between Stenwold and the sea-kinden. You could reasonably safely skip this book and move on with little missed out.
  
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Awix (3310 KP) rated Web in Books

Sep 6, 2019 (Updated Sep 6, 2019)  
Web
Web
John Wyndham | 1979 | Science Fiction/Fantasy
6
6.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
John Wyndham's final novel revisits a number of his themes and has the odd good passage, but you can tell the author has struggled with it. A group of idealists looking to create a perfect society discover they have made a bad choice of site: the location in question, a remote Pacific island, is already overrun by vast swarms of social spiders - possibly the result of nuclear testing in the region (or, failing that, a curse from the original islanders, displaced by the colonial powers).

Sounds like it has promise, but it takes a very long time to properly get going (the spiders don't appear until the second half of the book) and it's a bit unclear what points Wyndham is trying to make. Some of the divergences from the classic Wyndham formula are a little curious; the protagonist is older, and the general tone more fatalistic than in his better-known books. Fairly readable, but it lacks the big ideas and memorable imagery of his best novels.
  
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Izzy C (0 KP) rated Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017) in Movies

Nov 7, 2018  
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017)
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017)
2017 | Action, Adventure, Comedy
6
8.0 (306 Ratings)
Movie Rating Watch
Only very loosely related to the original film (0 more)
Contains spoilers, click to show
The original scared the crap out of me as a kid (the spiders, the monkeys, the general chaos). This one only seemed to have the vaguest connection to the first one and mostly went for laughs above any type of serious plot points or characterization. They had almost 22 years to think of a better sequel! As a stand-alone movie it's okay but they could have done so much more with it.