Smashbomb

This book came highly rated by people on the fantasy faction facebook group and goodreads, so I had high expectations when I started reading. The reader is thrown straight into the thick of this strange post-apocalyptic magical world and the terms and creatures therein.
The story follows Ryhalt Galharrow, a captain in the Blackwing, a group of soldiers and enforcers working for the supreme magician Crowfoot. They are charged with keeping order along the Range and tracking down dissenters and run-aways.
Galharrow quickly finds himself embroiled in a plot and a battle to save the republic from itself and the evil Deep Kings and their hordes of mutated zombies.
The narrative is extremely gritty and at times you can almost smell the filth and second-hand brandy.
While you are thrown into it without warning and without preamble, this is to McDonald's credit, as the reader pieces things together quite quickly, or can make up their own mind about how things look and work.
To sum this up, I would say it was like Mark Lawrence or Joe Abercrombie ghost-writing a Brandon Sanderson plot - with the best aspects of both sides (the gritty dialogue from the grimdark authors with the intricately designed magic system and urban landscape of the plotter).
A superbly crafted story with excellent flowing prose.

Kudos

Awix (3310 KP) rated Gamera: Revenge of Iris (1999) in Movies

Mar 15, 2019 (Updated Mar 15, 2019)

Gamera: Revenge of Iris (1999)

1999 | Fantasy, International

8.2

(5 Ratings)

Movie Rating

Apocalyptic final instalment in Kaneko's trilogy takes the Japanese monster movie to places it has never been before or since. Amid signs of the man-eating Gyaos creatures reappearing in vast numbers, an embittered girl bonds with the life-draining Iris creature to seek revenge on Gamera after her parents were killed in his battle with the first Gyaos some years earlier.

Incomplete Struggle (a much better title to my mind) is much more of a fantasy film than the previous chapter in the story, once again playing cleverly with various tropes of Japanese monster stories. The script takes the trouble to include characters from both previous films (it is clearly intended as a grand conclusion to the story) and also explores notions of pre-millennial angst. Once again, the monster battles are superbly staged, but the big ideas explored by the film are also fascinating, even if some elements of the story are left a bit vague. What one person sees as vaulting imagination and ambition, another may see as the script getting a bit out of control; some may also have an issue with the deliberate lack of closure at the very end of the film. Nevertheless, this movie manages to give the Japanese kaiju genre a sense of majesty and gravitas it has seldom achieved anywhere else.

Kudos

Mark @ Carstairs Considers (2340 KP) rated The Future King in Books

Apr 6, 2020

The Future King

James Riley | 2020 | Children, Science Fiction/Fantasy

7.0

(1 Ratings)

Book Rating

Can Fort Stop the Future King?

This book picks up almost immediately after the previous book ended. Fort has just rescued his father, but the man is in a coma. Oh, and half of England is under a dome. No one knows what is happening inside the dome, but a video has been released demanding that Fort and his friends Rachel and Jia be sent to the dome or the people inside won’t be released. While no one in charge intends to send the trio, they still find themselves there. Will they be able to stop what is coming?

If you haven’t read this series yet, don’t start with this book. It assumes you’ve read the first two, and there isn’t much background given to help explain the world that has been created. This book starts out a little slowly with too many teases about what might happen in the future, but once the main quest really gets going, the book picks up, and there are twists and surprises that kept me engaged. The characters are good, and Fort does more growing here. I’m not a fan of the post-apocalyptic setting, especially right now, but I am intrigue enough that I have to know what is going to happen next, so I will be back for more.