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Tom's Inheritance
Tom's Inheritance
T.J. Green | 2016
10
10.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
King Arthur is destined to return and Tom is destined to wake him.
When the Lady of the Lake summons Tom to the Other, she tells him he has to wake King Arthur from his long sleep on Avalon.
Tom starts a journey that will change his life forever.
He finds a world where magic still exists, and mythical creatures walk among fey. And he finds that the legends he thought were myth are very real.
So are ancient enemies.
If he’s to survive, he must learn to fight, and find courage he never knew he had.
He’s about to become part of a legend.
If you love magic, mystery, and Arthurian legend, you’ll love Tom’s Inheritance.

I have always enjoyed Arthurian tales but this beats the lot.
The characters are delightfully complex and intriguing, and all so different.
This is such a fun and magical adventure.
So beautifully written and descriptive.
I really, really enjoyed this story.
I am looking forward to getting started on the next book in the series Twice Born, which is about Merlin.
Can't wait to see where all the series leads.
  
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LeftSideCut (3778 KP) rated X-Men (2000) in Movies

Jun 7, 2019 (Updated Jun 8, 2019)  
X-Men (2000)
X-Men (2000)
2000 | Action, Sci-Fi
The first X-Men has not aged particularly well, but it's important to recognise it's impact on the movie landscape, especially for comic book films.
Although there has been comic book movies before, X-Men paved the way for everything that has come since, the good and the awful!

At the time it was almost magical, seeing characters I had grown up with flying about the screen (I was 12 when it was released), and the casting was inspired for the most part - Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Hugh Jackman and Anna Paquin in particular.

It also started the trend of lacing the theatrics and seriousness with subtle humour thought, and the balance here is pretty good.

Even now, the CGI isn't terrible (certainly better than the later released Origins)

By the same merit, the costumes look goofy these days, some of the scripting is very 2000s, and why on Earth did they cast Tyler Mane as a weirdly mute Sabretooth will always be beyond me.

All in all, there are much better X-Men films out there, and there are a lot worse, and I'll always have a soft spot for it!
  
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Janeeny (200 KP) rated The Iliad in Books

Jun 10, 2019  
The Iliad
The Iliad
Homer, E.V. Rieu, Peter Jones | 2014 | Essays
6
7.1 (11 Ratings)
Book Rating
Personally I think this should have also counted towards my classic read for the month aswell, but hey, I don’t make the rules . . oh, wait . .
For those of you not in the know The Iliad is Homers epic poem about the Trojan war, this version was translated by EV Rieu.
What can I say about this, without sounding like a complete philistine? It is essentially a Soap Opera based around testosterone fuelled macho men and a bunch of Gods having a hissy fit! I loved it!

Crivens, there’s a lot of people in it though!! It did take me a little while to get into it, and being a little rusty on my Greek mythology I kept forgetting who was on whose side, but I eventually found my stride, and if you can wade through all the different ways that different people were killed (Homer does really like describing how each person died, potentially the Tarantino of his day!) It is a really detailed account of a mythological war that inspired a whole wealth of literature, and I can see why it is a classic.
  
TH
The Hunt (Hunter's Mate, #1)
Anne Marsh | 2009
4
4.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
I had high hopes for this book. The plot is right up my alley with the mythology aspect and I was curious to see where the author would take it. Unfortunately, I found myself jaded with it by the time I finished. There seems to be a lot to the story that the author isn’t telling. I am not sure if she planned on elaborating in future installments, but she doesn’t even give us enough to really be curious. For example, the female lead will make a mental comment about her master but that’s it.
 
The leads were also much to be desired. There wasn’t anything about the lead female to make me like her. In fact, I felt disconnected from her as person in general.

I think my biggest problem was that I was a disappointed there wasn’t more erotica to it. We are given two scenes and they are so short I wondered why the author wasted her time. I loved the world and mythology the author created, but I guess it just wasn’t the story I wanted.
  
A delicious dirty erotic romance about two people discovering themselves again and healing.

I am going to be honest, by the time I made it to this book on my NetGalley list, I was about 1000% done with people who had something happen in their past that broke them and they put themselves back together as best they could. However, I have a thing for MMA fighters (maybe because my fiancé was one?) so I still requested this novel.

I am glad I did because Fighting for Control is a helluva intense novel with a heroine I could definitely get behind. I actually admired her a lot. She was such a strong and passionate woman, it was hard not to like her. And, despite his issues, I genuinely enjoyed Nikko too. I definitely could see why she fell for him.

While the whole “woman trying to heal PTSD Alpha male” is not even close to be a new or fresh trope, Price told it in a way that it was still enjoyable. If this type of story is your thing, then you will love this novel.
  
Baywatch (2017)
Baywatch (2017)
2017 | Action, Comedy, Crime
Funnier than expected
I'd expected to hate this film and although it a little bit ridiculous, I found a lot funnier than I ever thought it'd be.

Some of the one liners and wisecracks verging on hilarious, although they're not as frequent as id like. It's laughably bad in parts and that almost adds to its charm. It doesn't take itself too seriously. This is part of the problem though too, I struggled to tell if this was a spoof of the original show, if it was making fun or if it was trying to be serious as it flitted about. If they'd have concentrated on making this a loving mick-take of the show, I think it could've ended up being quite good. There's a scene over the end credits with the girls discussing why the swimsuits are as they are, and that's the sort of thing that should have been in the main film.


The only thing I really didn't get was the CGI and sfx. Did they purposely make it look really bad in homage to the show, or did was the budget spent elsewhere? It didn't work, it just looked naff.
  
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Heather (1 KP) rated Pinterest in Apps

Jan 20, 2018  
Pinterest
Pinterest
Photo & Video, Social Networking
8
8.7 (242 Ratings)
App Rating
I love the options to make boards for different things so you don't save craft ideas with cooking and so you can actually go back and find stuff. (1 more)
There are tons of ideas, more than most can think of or do in a lifetime.
My only pet peeve is that in order to access Pinterest you have to download the app or use the desktop website. It won't let you use your mobile browser & sometimes I don't have room for the app but would still like to browse without having to use a PC (0 more)
Love Pinterest!
A lot of ideas have saved me money and I am currently using it to plan my vow renewal as well as organize our apartment on a budget and they have tons of great ideas that I know will save me time and money. I highly recommend it. But know that you may find so much stuff you wont know what to do first and may not be able to complete all that you desire to if you have a short time frame. Also, always have a back up plan because everyone knows of the #PinterestFails LOL
  
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ClareR (5596 KP) rated Paris Adrift in Books

Feb 6, 2018  
Paris Adrift
Paris Adrift
E. J. Swift | 2018 | Fiction & Poetry
8
8.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Time travel in Paris.
A group of people who can travel through time decide to send two people back: a chronometrist and an incumbent. These two people will help to influence another incumbent in Paris 2017, and set off a chain of events that will save the world. Each 'anomaly' (which is what incumbents use to travel though time) has its very own incumbent, who is the only person capable of using it as a door in time.
Hallie's anomaly is in the cellar of a bar (Millie's) in Paris. Long story short, she meets the chronometrist, uses the anomaly and hops through time a bit, using her trips to change history.
I really enjoyed this. There was clearly a reasonable amount of research into the times that she went back to, and a lot of imagination went in to the times she travelled forwards to. I liked Hallie and her crazy, bohemian friends. I especially liked how it showed that small things can influence the big things in society.
Many thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the chance to read this great book!
  
Godzilla Vs King Ghidorah (1991)
Godzilla Vs King Ghidorah (1991)
1991 | Adventure, Sci-Fi
Eighteenth Godzilla movie (fifth Ghidorah movie, if anyone cares) goes back to campy basics following the relative underperformance of Godzilla Vs Biollante. Owes a lot to 60s and 70s Godzilla movies, but also to American SF movies of the 80s - Back to the Future and Terminator have clearly been an influence. Despite all this the film has an undeniably anti-American subtext (in the future, Japan will become the world's biggest superpower, causing jealous Americans to hatch evil plot to stop this) which is actually quite amusing (possibly less so if you're actually from the USA).

Interesting story, some of the special effects are a little variable but the monster battles are undeniably good fun. Given that Godzilla was a bad guy monster in all the films from this period, and Ghidorah is nearly always the bad guy monster, the question of how to resolve the plot without the bad guy monster winning is reasonably elegant. Some surprisingly edgy moments for a Godzilla movie, too - looks, albeit obliquely, at events connected to the Second World War in a way which previous films would never have dreamt of. Definitely from close to the top of the Godzilla stack.
  
With trying to juggle working at two restaurants, Sally doesn’t have time for anything else in her life, yet when her friend Eric tells her that his community chorus is doing Mozart’s Requiem, she tries out. Kyle, the lead for the tenors, is snarky to everyone at the auditions, but it is a surprise to everyone when his body is found during the first rehearsal. The police think it was an accident, but Sally isn’t so sure. When Kyle’s girlfriend asks Sally to look into it, she starts to find plenty of motives for murder. But was it really murder?

While Sally’s motive for looking into the murder is a little weak, the rest of the book is strong. We get plenty of motives and strong suspects. I thought I had everything figured out early, but by the end I was questioning myself. The returning characters are a lot of fun, especially Sally and Eric, who we got to know even better here.

NOTE: I received an ARC of this book.

Read my full review at <a href="http://carstairsconsiders.blogspot.com/2017/02/book-review-measure-of-murder-by-leslie.html">Carstairs Considers</a>.