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Awix (3310 KP) rated Web in Books

Sep 6, 2019 (Updated Sep 6, 2019)

Web

John Wyndham | 1979 | Science Fiction/Fantasy

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.

Kudos

Izzy C (0 KP) rated Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017) in Movies

Nov 7, 2018

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017)

2017 | Action, Adventure, Comedy

8.0

(305 Ratings)

Movie Rating

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.