Amazing Grace: The Man Who Was W.G.
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On a sunny afternoon in May 1868, nineteen-year-old Gilbert Grace stood in a Wiltshire field,...
The Seeds of Time
8.0
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In this thrilling collection of stories, John Wyndham, author of the acclaimed classics The Day of...
The Underground Railroad
7.7
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Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. All the slaves lead a hellish existence, but Cora...
I'd heard, and even knew a bit, about the former. The latter? Sad to say, not so much.
So, for my part, a little new knowledge is a good thing!
As the novel begins, Jack Lark is back in England after his exploits in America (during the Civil War) and Mexico of the previous entries; back where - I feel - he belongs (ummm, speaking internationally, that is, rather than his precise circumstances!) and running Victorian slumming 'tours' (for want of a better word) for the rich who have more money than sense!
I don't *think* I'm giving anything away when I say that one such tour inevitably goes wrong, leading Jack - and a few companions - to flee the country, travelling to Ethiopia to join the expedition against the Emperor Tewodros II of Ethiopia, more concerned with what they can purloin along the way than the rights and wrongs of the situation that led to the campaign in the first place!
All in all, another solid entry in the series: I'm looking forward to where Jack ends up next!
LeftSideCut (3776 KP) rated Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) in Movies
Nov 27, 2020
Once again, the huge positive is the great cast, and the chemistry they all share. The core six Avengers return, and provide the films humour (rightfully scaled back from the all out comedy tone of Guardians) and generally remind everyone why they're the solid backbone of this mammoth franchise.
There are plenty of new faces joining them, most notably Scarlet Witch (Elisabeth Olsen), Vision (Paul Bettany) and Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), and all integrate smoothly.
The villain is the titular Ultron (voiced by James Spader), a classic Marvel Comics villain that unfortunately ends up being another one-and-done MCU antagonist. This films main focus is the relationships between the Avengers, and sewing seeds for Civil War, and sadly, Ultron sort of gets pushed aside for this. It's a shame because Spader does a great job of making Ultron a sinister presence, but he ends up being little more than a CGI commander, of a CGI robot army.
Some of the set pieces are great though, particularly the Hulk vs Hulkbuster scene, and the climactic finale, and the child me who grew up reading these comics was nothing short of thrilled to see Vision in action.
Age of Ultron is somewhat underwhelming for a full blown Avengers entry, but still manages to be entertaining. Hopefully, we will see Ultron return in a future installment that has some more depth to it.
Forged Alliances (Tribal Spirits #1)
10.0
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Sierra Kanoska fought hard for her position as wolf alpha of the Red Rock pack, and intruders in her...
Paranormal Romance
Barren Island
Book
How does one remember a world that literally no longer exists? How do the moral imperatives to do so...
Fiction
The Half Has Never Been Told
Book
Americans tend to cast slavery as a pre-modern institution--the nation's original sin, perhaps, but...
The Democratic Forest
Book
Following the publication of Chromes in 2011 and Los Alamos Revisited in 2012, the reassessment of...