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Merissa (12069 KP) rated A Double Sacrifice in Books

Dec 17, 2018 (Updated May 31, 2023)  
A Double Sacrifice
A Double Sacrifice
Jaxx Steele | 2016 | LGBTQ+, Romance, Science Fiction/Fantasy
8
8.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
This is a novella that tells the story of an African tribe, their origins and traditions, and how that affects the first pair of fraternal twins born to the ruling line. It was always assumed that it would be the princess who would mate and live with the water god. However, this time, it is not the princess who is receiving the dreams, but her brother.

This story is based over a couple of weeks, but you still manage to be given all the information needed in a good way. There is no info dump here. Well written and with no editing or grammatical errors that I found, this was a short but steamy read that came to a satisfying conclusion. Definitely recommended.

* A copy of this book was provided to me with no requirements for a review. I voluntarily read this book, and the comments here are my honest opinion. *

Merissa
Archaeolibrarian - I Dig Good Books!
Mar 22, 2016
  
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Bob Mann (459 KP) rated Underwater (2020) in Movies

Feb 16, 2020 (Updated Feb 16, 2020)  
Underwater (2020)
Underwater (2020)
2020 | Horror, Sci-Fi
Erm.... (0 more)
Frenetic action in murky water - baffling (2 more)
Scientific inconsistencies
Waterlogged Alien wannabe
Soggy and forgettable
I had a sinking feeling (excuse the pun) about this movie from the word go. It's a lazy approach to 'mansplain' the whole set up for the movie through digital news posts during the main titles. It feels more patronising to the audience than having main titles and then a 'Star Wars-style' synopsis.

Once into the movie, director William Eubank gives us the bare minimum of character set-up for our heroine while she brushes her teeth*. (And no way did she even follow the British Dental Association recommendation of two minutes brushing!) (* Interestingly, the trailer seems to show some above water scenes/dialogue and introductions to the rest of the crew that never made the final cut.)

And then....

BAM!!!

I was thinking that the manic action that follows was some sort of dream or flashback. But no. We are pitched headlong into the story without pause as disaster strikes. It all feels positively indecent.

For we are seven miles down in the Mariana trench, when a drilling station springs a leak.

Now call me a cynic, but I would have *thought* that, at that depth, a single leak would implode the whole station in about 10 seconds flat. But then that wouldn't be cinematic enough, and would be a much shorter movie!

And there are numerous other scientific implausibilities. For example, diving helmets that appear to be able to withstand 15,750 psi of pressure (I Googled it) can be smashed-in by a woman by just bashing it.

Sigh.

We are in 'Alien-lite' territory again. Just as in last year's "The Meg", those pesky humans have disturbed something in its home territory.... and it's suitably pissed-off. The action centres on hippy-chick engineer Norah (Kristen Stewart). The script neatly describes her as a "flat-chested elfin creature"... a fact which every male in the audience has thought (come on guys, admit it , you did!) from the immediately preceding scene.

It was never entirely clear to me what skills Norah was supposed to have.... it seemed to flex from diving to electrical engineering to computer engineering.

Stewart is a handy actress to have in a movie, but here she is mostly relegated to lots of shots of her athletic body running through corridors in her skimpy crop-top and knickers.

Supporting Stewart are veteran French actor Vincent Cassel as the mission captain; "the funny one" Paul (T.J. Miller); the trusty male action figure Smith (John Gallagher Jr.); and Emily - the 'less-flat chested but screamy one' (Jessica Henwick). Emily also gets to run around in a T-shirt and knickers: you kind of quickly get to know the audience the film is trying to appeal to.

As will be obvious if you've seen any of these types of film before, not all of these folks are going to make it.

As this movie is presumably filmed in a small water tank in a Louisiana studio. Clearly the memo said "fill it with murky water so the audience can't see the sides". "And just for good measure, let's film it with hand-help rapidly moving cameras". The result is that a lot of the time, when there was a burst of frenetic underwater action, I had NO IDEA what was actually going on.

In this way, the movie reminded me of the shark B-movie "47 Metres Down" from a few years ago.

This is certainly not "Alien". Although similarly set, this is not "The Abyss" either. It's most similar perhaps to "Life", but without the clever twist ending.

It's also not a truly TERRIBLE movie either. But unfortunately this is one of the most "meh" action movies I've seen in the past year. It's just brain-crushingly forgettable.

There was only one vaguely memorable shot in the whole movie: a final shot of Kristen Stewart. But that just serves to make me think.... 'Stewart deserves much better than this'.

For a movie concerning itself with a lack of oxygen, watching this felt like a waste of it.

(For the full graphical review, please check out One Mann's Movies here - https://bob-the-movie-man.com/2020/02/15/one-manns-movies-film-review-underwater-2020/ ).
  
Into the Water
Into the Water
Paula Hawkins | 2017 | Fiction & Poetry
6
7.5 (45 Ratings)
Book Rating
Held my attention (0 more)
No big surprises (1 more)
Confusing POV
Not a bad book, but not a great one either
When the police show up at her door, Jules Abbott knows it isn't good news, but she isn't expecting this. Her older sister, Nel is dead--drowned in the lake known as the Drowning Pool back in their hometown. Jules has always vowed to never return to that place, but she finds herself back: in her childhood home, where Nel lived with her fifteen-year-old daughter, Lena. The assumption is that Nel committed suicide in the Pool, but Jules knows that isn't possible. Even though she hasn't seen her sister for years, she is convinced her water-loving sibling would never willingly die in the water. Meanwhile, Jules discovers that Nel was looking into other local residents who died at the Drowning Pool over the years for a book she was writing. What exactly happened to them--and Nel?

It's never easy to follow up a blockbuster like The Girl on the Train - I cannot even imagine the pressure. I didn't adore that book, but I do remember that I basically read it in one sitting. That wasn't the case with INTO THE WATER, though in its defense, I read it during an extremely busy period with work, where I basically collapsed in bed each night to read a few chapters.

This is not a bad book, but it wasn't a great one, either. It's not one that will stay with me. For one thing, much of its plot is predicated around one of my most reviled literary pet peeves: ridiculous miscommunication. You know, that whole thing where if the characters would just talk to each other, as normal folks do, for about 5 minutes, we wouldn't have to go through any of this? Yes. That. So that irritated me to no end.

There are also a lot of points of view in this book. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but it certainly took a while to keep everyone straight. I was glad I was reading this as an actual book, so I could flip back and see whom I'd been reading about earlier. Slogging through those early portions of many characters slowed things down for me and made it harder to get into the story.

As I said, it's not a bad book. I enjoyed reading it. The storyline is fairly interesting, overall, and it held my attention, even when I was pretty tired. I had a pretty decent suspicion of "whodunnit" fairly early on and turned out to be correct, but about halfway through, I was still second-guessing myself and pretty captivated. Nel, Jules, and Lena are intriguing characters, if not fairly frustrating in their lack of ability to talk to one another.

Still, overall, I was left feeling a little deflated by this one. There was no big "gasp" moment for me (perhaps because I had a decent inkling what had happened early on?) like GIRL. It was just a fairly good thriller that kept me entertained for a few days.
  
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Aquaman (2018)
Aquaman (2018)
2018 | Action, Sci-Fi
Straight out of the blocks I want to say that there's excellent fluffy in the shape of a golden retriever puppy, and we also get some brilliant chompers in the form of an army of sharks... and you know how I feel about sharks.


The other thing I want to say, and I'm sorry in advance for the fact that it might annoy you if you haven't been to see it yet, but every wistful shot of the sky over the ocean seems to look like the Free Willy poster shot. Not even kidding. It was the first thing I thought when I saw it. Right there >>> they might have just photoshopped it in, I really don't know.

But I'm getting away from the reason I'm doing this... Aquaman.

I'm please to say that (as you can see from my rating) I thoroughly enjoyed this film. DC have really managed to pull it back. I was a firm believer that it was DC TV and Marvel films that were the winners, when they went off and tried the other side it wasn't such a success for either of them. DC seem to have found the magic formula though and hot on the trail of Wonder Woman and Justice League this feels like a real winner.

Yes I enjoyed Justice League, we're not going to argue about it now!

The attention to detail in the effects is impressive. You just have to look at all the minute details in the reflections on the glass to see that. We're also treated to a lot of ocean scenery that I'm sure you could comb over for hours and still not spot everything hidden in there.

There are moments where the effects become a little iffy though. The tremendous scene where Aquaman and Mera are being chased over roof tops for example. We get wide shots that leave little room to scrimp on the effort and they look visually stunning. At the same time though one of the bad guys is chasing Mera by running through the buildings below her and the graphics on him just don't hold the same impact at all.

Aquaman's underwater scenes actually didn't look a lot different than any normal film apart from the fact that everyone tends to be hovering in mid air/water with ballet pose toes. But just for a minute let us talk about the hair and the capes. Both floaty things in water. Both awful to look at on screen. It's bizarrely unnatural and really sticks out like a sore thumb from the first time you see it. At least it's not something that all the characters had, some of them had their hair tied back, and then they've got some kind of underwater hair gel (they could market that really well on land), both of those options gave scenes a little less distraction.

The first action sequence we get with Aquaman in the sub has some amazing camera work in it. We turn and flip with the characters following the motion of the body as it's being tossed around by our hero. It makes for an exciting scene, it's honestly not something I remember seeing in other films. This sequence also had a rather impressive use of a doorway as a lethal weapon.

While Aquaman is definitely a light-hearted superhero movie it does have it's deep moments. (And I'm not just talking about the ocean... no? Fine! No ridiculous jokes.) Manta and his father have a particularly moving moment that I wasn't expecting at all, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Michael Beach work so well together in that scene that it was a real shame it was over so quickly. Jason Momoa also gets some great speeches throughout the film, but in his case they are taken away from him at the last moment. I get it, he's an edgy no nonsense kind of a character that says it like it is. But let him just have one speech where he doesn't ruin it at the end by calling someone a dick.

Now I'll admit that it didn't hurt that this movie had some very attractive people in it that were wet a lot of the time... you know you were thinking it too! I do however want to call them out on their Bond-esque emerging from the water scene... it didn't work, find your own niche.

I'm honestly amazed at how many notes I wrote, I've got so many thing I want to talk about but honestly we'd be here all day so I'm just going to highlight the rest for your free interpretation: superhero landings, power slides, "little baby oceans", drumming octopus, killer narwhals?, bar montage, Ant-Man And The Wasp rip off credits, rip off Bifrost, stop pollution the oceans it's pissing off the Atlantians. Oh, and Julie Andrews was in it!

What you should do

This is a very good superhero movie. There's love, there's action, there's friendship, and more importantly they have a cute dog. You should definitely see it.

Movie thing you wish you could take home

I do love the water, so some Atlantian superpowers wouldn't go amiss. There's no way I currently look that graceful in the water.
  
Hell & High Water (THIRDS #1)
Hell & High Water (THIRDS #1)
Charlie Cochet | 2014 | Fiction & Poetry
10
9.0 (2 Ratings)
Book Rating
Hell & High Water (THIRDS #1) by Charlie Cochet
Hell & High Water is the first book in the THIRDS series by Charlie Cochet. It starts with Dex putting his work partner behind bars for shooting a Therian in the back in cold blood. Of course, this doesn't go down very well with others in the police force so he gets beaten up for his trouble on more than one occasion. He also gets shunted out of his job into a new one with the Therian force, called a promotion to help it go down easier. When he gets there, he realises that his new team is in trouble, and he has some big boots to fill. This is also whilst they have an ongoing investigation, plus the tensions within the team.

This book had me laughing out loud with Dex's comments and snark, whilst in the next breath, my heart was breaking for him/them/her (whichever one of the team that was being spoken about). Although Dex could be called high maintenance, his humour is his shield and he wields it with precision! He has a brain and eyes, and isn't afraid to use them - seeing connections and things that others are trying to hide. There isn't a lot of unnecessary drama with Dex, the drama that is there is usually for a reason. Sloane doesn't want a new partner, but is on his last warning. To his surprise, Dex is accepted by most of the team quicker than he would have thought possible. To his dismay, he finds that he also likes him, although he doesn't want to.

This book is excellently written, and will draw you in as you stay with Dex as he goes through everything. The pace is smooth throughout, building up to the climax that will leave you breathless. Full of emotions, whether they are 'good' or 'bad', as a reader you will experience a whole gamut of them. There were no editing or grammatical errors that disrupted my reading flow. Highly recommended, and I can't wait to continue with this series.

* Verified Purchase ~ April 2017 *

Merissa
Archaeolibrarian - I Dig Good Books!
  
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mmb02191 (81 KP) rated the PC version of Kingdom Come Deliverance in Video Games

Jan 24, 2019  
Kingdom Come Deliverance
Kingdom Come Deliverance
2018 | Action, Role-Playing
Story (3 more)
Skill Tree
Historical accuracy
Characters
Apparently, the console version has some bugs?? (0 more)
New favorite game
This game, right from the beginning, is beautiful, immersive, and really freaking hard (but in the best of ways).

You start out as Henry, and you suck. At everything. I fell off my horse a couple times, can't read, died immediately when trying to fight a soldier. It was great.

This game isn't your usual game where you're a hero expected to beat some evil force. Truth is, you're a peasant, and no one outside of Skalitz (your home town) really likes you all that much.

You don't know how to really do anything, from the obvious like swordfighting (you're a peasant...) to things like reading and even speech (convincing people of things)

This game has such a realistic leveling up system. You get better at skills the more you practice them, just like in real life.

At the beginning, Henry barely knows how to hold a bow, it going all over the screen and the arrows going definitely NOT where you want them to go. It would take my 20 shots to kill a stationary rabbit....

But you get better. You improve. Henry learns through hard work and sweat. His hand steadies, his aim improves (with help from you of course!) and soon you're catching plenty of (illegally poached) animals.

Unlike many games, fighting is not always the answer. Sometimes you have to be creative with your solutions to issues instead of just swinging a sword. Maybe persuade the guard to let you go, or bribe him.

Another mechanic that is very realistic, you have to make sure Henry takes care of himself. He needs to eat and sleep, but shouldn't overeat or drink, or he will feel sluggish. If you're in a fight and covered with blood, people aren't going to trust you, and are going to freak out a little. Make sure you keep Henry clean! There are water troughs that you can find to splash some water on yourself, or go to a bathhouse for a more thorough cleaning.

Overall, this is the best game I have ever played. There is always something to do, and once I am playing, I can't stop.