Runaway Girl: A beautiful girl. Trafficked for sex. Is there nowhere to hide?
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Fourteen-year-old Adrianna arrives on Casey’s doorstep with no possessions, no English, and no...
Manifesto: On Never Giving Up
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The powerful, urgent manifesto on never giving up from Booker prize-winning trailblazer, Bernardine...
Memoir Non Fiction Feminism Social Justice Race Writing
Ross (3282 KP) rated The Rage of Dragons in Books
May 21, 2020
The story follows the development and move into manhood of one of the lower social classes of the Omehi.
Tau is nothing special, one of the lower classes and only mediocre with a sword. He is hoping to get into the army and find himself so badly injured he can be honourably discharged and have the social standing to ask his love to marry him.
However, early on in his testing for acceptance into the army, he wins a fight with a pathetic noble and his father is subsequently murdered for justice.
The story then follows Tau's travels and training in order to be accepted on his own merit. He is quickly accepted into an experimental set of trainees and his development picks up a gear, thought he keeps hidden his secret desire to kill those nobles responsible for his father's death. Through mixing with magic and extreme training, Tau becomes a force to be reckoned with, but is still to pick the right side to fight against.
The writing style is good, however a number of made-up (I presume) terms are used throughout the book, and it can be quite hard to determine what they mean and who they refer to. This covers the different ranks of the armies, so can largely be ignored, but it is a little jarring for the reader.
The pacing was all over the place. It was slow to get moving, and when it did it quickly ground to a halt again, as we suffered through days and weeks of training. While this was generally for the benefit of the overall story as a whole, it did take some effort to get through. If this was a film, it would have needed a montage for sure.
The plot itself starts fairly basic - one man out for revenge against people he can't possibly beat and using this as motivation to better himself. However the final quarter of the book brings in another aspect and the book significantly improves for that.
Thanks, Obama: My Hopey Changey White House Years
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A different kind of White House memoir, presidential speechwriter David Litt's comic account of his...
Both Sides of the Bench
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Barrington Black was for many years one of the UK's best-known criminal defence lawyers and founder...
Civitas by Design: Building Better Communities, from the Garden City to the New Urbanism
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Since the end of the nineteenth century, city planners have aspired not only to improve the physical...
The Bill of Rights
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The Bill of Rights is a comprehensive survey of all aspects of the U.S. Bill of Rights; from its...
Erika (17788 KP) rated The Life and Trials of Oscar Pistorius (30 for 30) in TV
Nov 25, 2020
This series consists of 4 episodes, that are nearly 2 hours each. To clarify, these TV shows with really long eps are not the norm in the USA, like they are elsewhere.
I had watched the Dateline ep on the Pistorious murder a few weeks before I watched this series. Of course, the narrative is of that one was skewed towards the story of domestic violence, and justice for Reeva. This is the story that's peddled all over the world. Not that it's wrong, I'm a supporter of women in domestic situations, but it's always struck me as extremely biased.
This doc did focus on Oscar, his upbringing, and his quest to complete in the able-bodied (sheesh - that's awful) Olympics. His side of the story is highly plausible, and his actions were a product of his upbringing. The documentary films really shed like on the social situation in South Africa at the time. Honestly, I only took one history class that dealt with continent in general, so there wasn't really a focus on the country itself. Seriously, the only things that stood out in my mind regarding South Africa were their incredibly odd accents, Mandela, and District 9. So, I found the additional information extremely interesting.
Overall, I found it to be far more balanced than anything I had seen in the past regarding the case, which was refreshing.
Malcolm X at Oxford Union: Radical Politics In a Global Era
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In 1964 Malcolm X was invited to debate at the Oxford Union Society at Oxford University. The topic...
10 Things I Hate About Pinky
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The delightful follow-up to When Dimple Met Rishi and There’s Something about Sweetie, which...