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Beautiful Creatures (Caster Chronicles, #1)
Beautiful Creatures (Caster Chronicles, #1)
Kami Garcia | 2009 | Fiction & Poetry, Paranormal, Romance
8
7.4 (34 Ratings)
Book Rating
Like most books I read, Beautiful Creatures was just randomly picked up and looked interesting, so I read it. Plus, I needed some books to occupy me and it was somehow on my to-read list already. I just didn't get the chance to read it over the summer. Call that lucky to be in the library at the time.

I will probably admit, that although I read the entire series, I didn't really like the first 2 books in the series. Except for the ending and the summaries. Which was why I continued reading the series. :) Or maybe there was just something special about Ethan, Lena, Riley, Link, etc that I just can't place a tab on? Or was there a little cliffhanger (which I totally love) that just urged me to read on and give the series another try?

I will also admit that I liked Beautiful Chaos overall. The character haven't changed... although they have. In a way. Ethan is still plain Wayward, just like from Day One. Besides getting "chased around" by his other self, of course. Lena is back to herself again, although she is now a light and dark caster due to the Seventeenth Moon. I didn't really enjoy Lena's distance and major meltdown from Beautiful Darkness, so it's nice to know that we get her back again.

Link has changed majorly in a way, at least in physical and how do you say this? erm, he's developed "Vampire-like" senses after being bit by John Breed from Beautiful Darkness, so he's now one-quarters Incubus. He's still on and off with Once Upon A Siren, Riley, but she's still same old, same old Riley. In Mortal form, yet continues about life Siren Style with no powers.

Overall, Beautiful Chaos is my favorite book out of the series so far. It's more action-packed than the books before it, even if it has quite the sad ending. I will most likely read the fourth and final book in the series, Beautiful Redemption (released already) because I just have to know what happens next to Ethan, Lena and the other characters.

Speaking of which, and I know I'm a bit off-topic, but who's excited for the Beautiful Creatures movie? I know am! The trailer looked awesome...

<a href="https://bookwyrmingthoughts.com/review-beautiful-chaos-by-kami-garcia-and-margaret-stohl/"; target="_blank">This review was originally posted on Bookwyrming Thoughts</a>
  
Love, Death &amp; Robots - Season 1
Love, Death & Robots - Season 1
2019 | Animation, Fantasy, Sci-Fi
The beauty of Love, Death and Robots is it's format. An eclectic collection of animated short films, some genuinely brilliant, with a handful of duds, truly gives something for everyone.

There are 18 films on show here, all with something different to offer.
Firstly there were 3 that failed to really resonate with me - Sucker of Souls, When the Yoghurt Took Over, and Alternate Histories. I found these three either slightly boring, or silly for the sake of being silly. There were 2 that sort of floated in the middle - The Dump, and Blind Spot, not bad by any means (none of the shorts are truly bad) but just were sort of there.
Leaving a grand total of 13 shorts that I thought were really really great.

A handful of these realistic CGI entries - namely, Sonnie's Edge, Three Robots, Beyond the Aquila Rift, Shape Shifters (one of the highlights for me), Helping Hand (reminded me of Gravity, in a great way), Lucky 13, and The Secret War.
These lot are lengthier offerings, and boast some good looking CGI animation, bordering on photo realism at times. The run time gives an opportunity for some decent fleshed out stories.
The Secret War in particular is nothing short of breath taking, and may well be my top pick of the whole season.
Elsewhere, we have more cartoony offerings - Suits, a loud animation that features farmers in mech suits fighting aliens. Zima Blue, a beautifully touching story of how a simple robot transcends existence itself - another highlight of the season. Fish Night, a short desert based drama bursting with colour. The animation of this one reminded me of A Scanner Darkly. Good Hunting, a collision of Ancient Chinese stories and a Bioshock style steampunk future. Hard to watch at times, but stunning also - easily would have been my top pick if The Secret War wasn't included.
Rounding it off we have The Witness, and animation that looks like a moving oil painting and reminded me of Mirror's Edge, and Ice Age, a fun short that's the only live action inclusion with CGI flourishes about a civilisation growing in a couple freezer.

It's an ambitious collection of shorts for sure, but like I said, there's something here for everyone. Even the ones that I liked the least are a 6/10 at worst. If you like sci-fi or animation in any shape or form, then check this series out.
  
    TrailMapps: Rotorua

    TrailMapps: Rotorua

    Reference and Travel

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    Rotorua’s best trail map for mountain bikers, runners and walkers. ·No data required after the...

Shift Work (Night Shift #1)
Shift Work (Night Shift #1)
TA Moore | 2021 | Crime, LGBTQ+, Paranormal
10
10.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
It's only 117 pages, but packs a mighty powerful punch!
I was gifted my copy of this book, and I thank Ms Moore for that.

However!

I went into this book thinking it was a complete story. And its freaking NOT!! It's a mahoosive cliff hanger, and my poor kindle is lucky to still be working!

Cos there I was, merrily reading away, not paying much attention to how much I have left, and BOOM! The end crept up on me and I was OMFG and JHFC and all kinds of loud swear words a sailor would be proud of!

Oh, this is a bloody good book, but you need to know, its a cliff hanger, one of Dover Cliff size and I didn't know that!

Anyway, now I've ranted about that, here's what I really thought ;-P

I bloody LOVED this book! These werewolves are somewhat different, and it took me a little time to piece together the clues about how they are around "that time of the month" (I loved those little jokes, they proper made me chuckle!) They are dark and deadly around the full moon. Cade has just a few days to find out who the girl is in the morgue, the one who shouldn't be there. Working with Marlow, who is Night Shift (capitals intended, its how it is said in the book) and null. It took me a while to figure out what THAT meant, and I'm not entirely sure I've fully got it, but you make your own mind up.

I've not tagged this as romance. There is steam and attraction, but there is no romance here, not yet. Oh they have a moment in the bathroom that was rudely interrupted, but once they get some time together, the chemistry will explode, I'm sure.

I have it on authority that the next book isn't too far away, and I really hope that Ms Moore doesn't cliff hang that one, cos I'm not sure that my kindle can survive a second trip to the wall so close to the last one!

It's only 117 pages, but packs a mighty powerful punch!

So, all in all, a bloody good book, but April needs to hurry the chuffing heck up!

5 stars (but I would, even for such a short, cliffhanger book, give it more if I could!)

**same worded review will appear elsewhere**
  
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Tom Chaplin recommended OK Computer by Radiohead in Music (curated)

 
OK Computer by Radiohead
OK Computer by Radiohead
1997 | Alternative, Rock

"Well everything’s been said about it, hasn’t it? Again, it was around the same time as Bring It On. I went out to South Africa for a gap year to work on a school. It was just as I was starting to smoke weed, it was exciting, and there were no responsibilities in life. I remember we didn’t have a music system out there, we had no money and a mate of mine went and bought a cassette player, it was a single deck cassette player, with terrible tinny speakers, but I had copied a tape of OK Computer before leaving! I don’t think I played any other album for about a year, it was on permanent rotation. What I found so compelling about it was that you can’t hear a single thing this guy’s singing! He has this real slurred delivery with every song and it was just an assault on the brain in terms of the production and the instrumentation and it was all coming through this terrible little tape player in South Africa! I thought I’d figured out what I thought the lyrics were and, largely, a lot of them were wrong, but I didn’t have the inlay card so I didn’t know! I just remember this haze of completely falling in love with the sound of this record and what I thought were the words. They really summed up the way a lot of people felt at the time, the alienation and the fear of a quickly changing world, all the pre-millennium stuff. It summed up the world that I occupied. It’s why it’s still the greatest album that I think has been put out in my lifetime; they're a band who, at that point, reached their songwriting peak, and [Thom Yorke]’s never got there since as far as I’m concerned. They were still young enough to have that punky quality but old enough to have those ballads that leave you feeling quite cold like 'Lucky' and 'No Surprises'. At that time, we were all just desperate to be Radiohead, everyone had the same set-ups and the same guitars! I can’t listen to it anymore though - as a band, if you’re influenced too much by one thing, as we were, it can kind of stifle you."

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