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The Colour of Murder

Julian Symons

10.0 (1 Ratings) Rate It

Book

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY MARTIN EDWARDS 'One of our most ingenious and stylish home-grown crime...

Fiction Historical Mystery Thriller

＊✿❀ Maki ❀✿＊ (7 KP) rated The Lightning Thief in Books

May 3, 2018

The Lightning Thief

Rick Riordan | 2005 | Children, Fiction & Poetry

8.6

(100 Ratings)

Book Rating

Percy Jackson is a series that I've been meaning to get around to for ages. Pretty much everybody I know who have read the books absolutely adore them.

So, when I needed a few quick reads to play catch up on my reading challenge, I decided that it was a good enough time to give the series a go.

...and it's not too bad.

There was a lot about The Lightning Thief that I enjoyed. The premise was a lot of fun. I liked the humor - especially the chapter titles. I liked the translation of Olympus from ancient European culture to modern American culture. I loved that this is a kids' series that rewards children for knowing mythology - if you're familiar with Greek myths at all, you'll know almost from the start of each encounter what Percy and the group are up against.

That's also kind where I started having problems, though.

The book is essentially non-stop action. Which isn't, in itself, a bad thing. But the action plays out like a series of video game encounters. Percy and his friends will travel so far in their quest, run into someone/a monster who will (sometimes accidentally) help them get to the next step of their quest, where they'll travel a certain distance again before running into something else. Repeat throughout the entire book. There are small moments of character building, but they're squeezed in where they'll fit between action scenes.

I'm more than willing to admit that that's just me, though. I'm not exactly the book's intended audience, and I can completely see how the pacing and whatnot would appeal to kids. I did enjoy it enough to continue on in the series, though.

Kudos

Lee (2222 KP) rated Avengers: Endgame (2019) in Movies

Apr 29, 2019

Avengers: Endgame (2019)

2019 | Sci-Fi, Thriller

8.9

(198 Ratings)

Movie Rating Watch

For me, this was just a perfect movie

After the intensity and shock of Infinity War, I was certainly expecting some kind of epic payback and a plan to try and correct or alter the devastating effects of the snap, but I had no idea how that would all play out and wrap things up for us. Marvel have perfected the art of producing trailers which either give very little away, or hint at something which then doesn't even play out the way you expected. Not only did the trailers for Endgame follow that trend, there were parts of the trailers that weren't even in the movie! The result is something which gave me everything I hoped for, and a lot more.

Endgame also manages to include pretty much every single MCU character to date, including characters who you would never even imagine seeing in this movie. And it expertly and effortlessly juggles every single one of them too, weaving multiple plot threads and themes, paying homage to and referencing much of its back catalogue of movies. It rewards an audience that has been invested in these movies all the way, and it does this all perfectly. These are characters that we've followed and loved for over 10 years, experiencing their highs and their lows right there with them. We've laughed with them, felt their pain and their suffering, felt empowered and inspired by them. Endgame is the closing chapter to what has been one hell of an incredible journey and was always going to provide us with heightened levels of all of those emotions. Once again, I certainly wasn't expecting it to do that quite as perfectly as it did, and in as many ways as it did too. For me, it was the perfect conclusion to an incredible saga, and it completely blew me away.