Carl Alves's Blog, page 17
April 23, 2018
Westworld: Journey into Night
It took me about halfway through the season to figure out what was going on in Westworld season 1. That was the point where the show became very enjoyable for me. The season opener of season 2 was similarly confusing. The conveying of present, near term flashback (the end of season 1) and far past flashbacks made it tricky to know what was going on.
Bernard
Like me, Bernard seemed to be stepping through this episode in a state of confusion after waking up along the beach with water approaching him after some strange discussions with Dolores about what is real and what isn’t real. Paramilitary operatives from Delos have swarmed the beach and are preparing to take the park back from the hosts, after their full on revolution. There’s a brutal scene here where they cut into the skull of a Ghost Nation warrior and remove a cylinder from his head. The cylinder reveals Dolores killing him. Bernard is always a step slow as he and Charlotte try to escape on the night of the revolution with a group of guests in tuxedos and evening gowns. The guests all get mowed down by the rampaging hosts, leaving only Bernard and Charlotte to survive. This was when things got weird as Charlotte tries to send a rescue message only to find out that they must deliver Peter Abernathy, who has a copy of all of the data on Westworld guests, before they will get rescued. Then there were those freaky white drone hosts that were extracting the brains of the hosts and copying their data. The episode concludes with a whole mess of hosts drowned in a lake that wasn’t supposed to be there with the revelation that Bernard killed them all. Where that leaves Dolores is anyone’s guess.
Maeve
Maeve is trying to find her daughter and has commandeered Lee, the bastard writer in charge of storytelling and enlists her host lover to help her. What’s not clear is whether or not Maeve’s daughter is real or just a memory implanted in her head.
The Man in Black
A little bruised and worse for wear, he managed to survive the host revolution. He encounters an android version of young Robert Ford who tells him he must find the door, whatever that means. For the host’s help, the Man in Black kills him. I’m glad he made it out alive for season two. The Man in Black/young Jimi Simpson is the most compelling character in the show.
Dolores
Dolores is on a killing rampage, obliterating every host in her path. She is also growing increasingly sentient, as the opening scene with her and Bernard indicates. The question is does Dolores drown in the lake? I seriously doubt it. She’s far too important a character to go down that easily. My guess is that Dolores is going to make it out of the park and go to one of the other Delos theme parks.
Bernard
Like me, Bernard seemed to be stepping through this episode in a state of confusion after waking up along the beach with water approaching him after some strange discussions with Dolores about what is real and what isn’t real. Paramilitary operatives from Delos have swarmed the beach and are preparing to take the park back from the hosts, after their full on revolution. There’s a brutal scene here where they cut into the skull of a Ghost Nation warrior and remove a cylinder from his head. The cylinder reveals Dolores killing him. Bernard is always a step slow as he and Charlotte try to escape on the night of the revolution with a group of guests in tuxedos and evening gowns. The guests all get mowed down by the rampaging hosts, leaving only Bernard and Charlotte to survive. This was when things got weird as Charlotte tries to send a rescue message only to find out that they must deliver Peter Abernathy, who has a copy of all of the data on Westworld guests, before they will get rescued. Then there were those freaky white drone hosts that were extracting the brains of the hosts and copying their data. The episode concludes with a whole mess of hosts drowned in a lake that wasn’t supposed to be there with the revelation that Bernard killed them all. Where that leaves Dolores is anyone’s guess.
Maeve
Maeve is trying to find her daughter and has commandeered Lee, the bastard writer in charge of storytelling and enlists her host lover to help her. What’s not clear is whether or not Maeve’s daughter is real or just a memory implanted in her head.
The Man in Black
A little bruised and worse for wear, he managed to survive the host revolution. He encounters an android version of young Robert Ford who tells him he must find the door, whatever that means. For the host’s help, the Man in Black kills him. I’m glad he made it out alive for season two. The Man in Black/young Jimi Simpson is the most compelling character in the show.
Dolores
Dolores is on a killing rampage, obliterating every host in her path. She is also growing increasingly sentient, as the opening scene with her and Bernard indicates. The question is does Dolores drown in the lake? I seriously doubt it. She’s far too important a character to go down that easily. My guess is that Dolores is going to make it out of the park and go to one of the other Delos theme parks.
April 17, 2018
Movie Review: Rampage
Rampage, based off the video game from the eighties (full disclosure: I was a big fan of the video game and played it frequently), is a prototypical summer action movie, even though it isn’t quite summer yet—certainly not here in the East Coast anyway. The plot and concept weren’t the most intricate I’ve ever seen. A stereotypically evil biotech company is working on weaponizing genetic editing and practicing it out in space. When their space experiments go awry, canisters with the edited DNA land in three different places, infecting a silverback gorilla, a massive wolf, and an alligator, turning them into giant, genetically modified creatures with absurd levels of aggression, set on rampaging everything they encounter.
George, the albino gorilla, is in San Diego, under the care of Davis Okoye, skillfully played by Dwayne Johnson, who, in my humble opinion, is the perfect lead actor for an action movie. When George, Ralph, and Lizzie go wild and are about to destroy Chicago, Davis must do what the US military can’t do—stop these creatures. The plot isn’t overly sophisticated and this movie won’t be winning any awards, but it was a fun and enjoyable movie. There was lots of good action, good special effects, and although it was a fairly simple formula, there weren’t big plot holes or gaps in logic. My biggest complaints were that the character of the CEO of the evil biotech company was absolutely abysmal. There is no way that any major corporation would have a CEO that was that big of a tool. My other complaint is that Jeffrey Dean Morgan played his character exactly the way he plays Negan in The Walking Dead. I don’t know if this is because he has no range as an actor or if they instructed him to play the character that way, but it didn’t work for me. My other quibble, was that for a family movie, it had way too much swearing. Otherwise, sit back and enjoy a fun, action movie.
George, the albino gorilla, is in San Diego, under the care of Davis Okoye, skillfully played by Dwayne Johnson, who, in my humble opinion, is the perfect lead actor for an action movie. When George, Ralph, and Lizzie go wild and are about to destroy Chicago, Davis must do what the US military can’t do—stop these creatures. The plot isn’t overly sophisticated and this movie won’t be winning any awards, but it was a fun and enjoyable movie. There was lots of good action, good special effects, and although it was a fairly simple formula, there weren’t big plot holes or gaps in logic. My biggest complaints were that the character of the CEO of the evil biotech company was absolutely abysmal. There is no way that any major corporation would have a CEO that was that big of a tool. My other complaint is that Jeffrey Dean Morgan played his character exactly the way he plays Negan in The Walking Dead. I don’t know if this is because he has no range as an actor or if they instructed him to play the character that way, but it didn’t work for me. My other quibble, was that for a family movie, it had way too much swearing. Otherwise, sit back and enjoy a fun, action movie.
April 13, 2018
Flight of the Nighthawks by Raymond Feist
In Flight of the Nighthawks, there are numerous storylines going at once. They all converge together as the sorcerer, Pug, and his Conclave of Shadows group of magicians and various undercover agents attempts to thwart a plot to destroy the government of Kesh, the most powerful nation in their world. It all starts when powerful nobles in Kesh began to drop like flies. Meanwhile there are rumors that the brothers who are in the line of succession of the emperor are prepared to fight it out for the throne, even though they seem to get along quite well.
There was much that I enjoyed about this novel. It moved along at a quick pace. There was lots of intrigue and action. It wasn’t overly burdened by long descriptions of setting or complex world building, and the quality of the writing was good. On that basis, I give this novel a thumbs up. I thought starting off with the first novel in a series would mean that I wouldn’t have an issue following it since there were no other preceding novels to catch up on. However, even though this was the first in the series, apparently there was a whole lot of other related novels that I never read, since it felt as if half of the time I was missing out on things since there was so much backstory that I was unfamiliar with, and the explanations of what was happening wasn’t always sufficient to figure it all out. Despite that, I was still able to enjoy the novel and would recommend it even if you hadn’t read the other entries in the series.
There was much that I enjoyed about this novel. It moved along at a quick pace. There was lots of intrigue and action. It wasn’t overly burdened by long descriptions of setting or complex world building, and the quality of the writing was good. On that basis, I give this novel a thumbs up. I thought starting off with the first novel in a series would mean that I wouldn’t have an issue following it since there were no other preceding novels to catch up on. However, even though this was the first in the series, apparently there was a whole lot of other related novels that I never read, since it felt as if half of the time I was missing out on things since there was so much backstory that I was unfamiliar with, and the explanations of what was happening wasn’t always sufficient to figure it all out. Despite that, I was still able to enjoy the novel and would recommend it even if you hadn’t read the other entries in the series.
April 9, 2018
Inheritance by Joe McKinney
Author Joe McKinney draws on his experiences as a San Antonio police officer and his instincts as one of today’s premier horror authors to spin a tale of familial strife and inner turmoil in this novel that features some strong horror elements. Paul Henninger is a rookie cop, who led a rough childhood where his sickly mother died early and he was raised by a demented father, who he killed at a young age, except that Paul doesn’t know the half of what really happened when he was young. It all comes back to haunt Paul just as he is starting off his career as a cop when police are murdered and dead junkies begin to rise. Paul has to learn about his past and face the destiny that his father laid out for him as well as the tremendous power that lies within him in trying to avoid an apocalypse.
What I felt as I was reading this novel was a real feel of authenticity whenever there were police elements in the story, which was frequent. I don’t get this in many other novels that involve police officers. Clearly, Joe McKinney knows his stuff. He also does two other things very well—build tension in this novel and create a growing sense of dread. He hooked me in as a reader very early on, although I did experience bits of frustration for parts of the novel, when I didn’t feel as if I really knew what was going on. The other trouble spots I found was in Paul’s character, which was generally well done, but he experienced some abrupt shifts in attitude in behavior which I found problematic. For the most part, McKinney pressed the right buttons and put together a horror novel that I would recommend to anyone who is a fan of the genre.
What I felt as I was reading this novel was a real feel of authenticity whenever there were police elements in the story, which was frequent. I don’t get this in many other novels that involve police officers. Clearly, Joe McKinney knows his stuff. He also does two other things very well—build tension in this novel and create a growing sense of dread. He hooked me in as a reader very early on, although I did experience bits of frustration for parts of the novel, when I didn’t feel as if I really knew what was going on. The other trouble spots I found was in Paul’s character, which was generally well done, but he experienced some abrupt shifts in attitude in behavior which I found problematic. For the most part, McKinney pressed the right buttons and put together a horror novel that I would recommend to anyone who is a fan of the genre.
March 17, 2018
The Legions of Fire by David Drake
The Legions of Fire is sort of an alternate history, fantasy novel that is set in ancient Rome except that magic and all sorts of monsters exist. The basic premise of the story is that there is a wizard who is an advisor to a senator in Carce, a Roman city, who is trying to bring about the ruin of the world by calling forth a group of gods from a different plane of existence. There are four people related or acquainted with the senator who together and separately are trying to stop this from happening.
This novel gets off to a terrible start. Apparently, this author never heard the advice that the number one rule as a fiction author is to hook in the reader from the very start of the story. Not only does the author not accomplish this, but nothing whatsoever of interest happens for the first hundred pages or so. Eventually, there are things happening, but by that point in the novel, I had totally lost interest and could never gain interest because the author had lost me. Another problem I had was that the four main characters all go on adventures to different planes and they all fight off various types of monsters. This made the novel both repetitive and confusing. It was hard to tell who was doing what because they were all embarking on the same type of mission with the same type of storyline.
This novel gets off to a terrible start. Apparently, this author never heard the advice that the number one rule as a fiction author is to hook in the reader from the very start of the story. Not only does the author not accomplish this, but nothing whatsoever of interest happens for the first hundred pages or so. Eventually, there are things happening, but by that point in the novel, I had totally lost interest and could never gain interest because the author had lost me. Another problem I had was that the four main characters all go on adventures to different planes and they all fight off various types of monsters. This made the novel both repetitive and confusing. It was hard to tell who was doing what because they were all embarking on the same type of mission with the same type of storyline.
March 10, 2018
Morgawr by Terry Brooks
After having thoroughly enjoyed the first two novels in the Jerle Shannara series, my expectations were quite high for this novel. Perhaps it was those high expectations that I had that led to this novel being somewhat of a disappointment. There wasn’t any one specific thing that I can point to that led me to this conclusion, other than perhaps it just wasn’t as good as either of the first two novels. The biggest flaws that I can point to is that certain points of the novel (somewhere around the middle) felt very repetitive. Also, in general, I thought this novel was fairly predictable. Whereas, other big characters were fair game to get killed off in the previous novels, in this one, the author seemed very reticent to kill off any protagonist of any consequence.
I don’t want to sound overly negative. At its heart, this was a fun epic fantasy adventure. Terry Brooks is a very accomplished and professional author and that was demonstrated here. I’m not even sure that my criticisms are fully warranted, but I came away just a bit like “Meh” from the Emoji Movie. In general, the last volume of a series has a tendency to disappoint, and although this was a solid effort and fairly enjoyable, it did not wow me. So, if you’ve read the previous two novels, you will certainly want to read this one as well, but it may not meet all of your expectations.
I don’t want to sound overly negative. At its heart, this was a fun epic fantasy adventure. Terry Brooks is a very accomplished and professional author and that was demonstrated here. I’m not even sure that my criticisms are fully warranted, but I came away just a bit like “Meh” from the Emoji Movie. In general, the last volume of a series has a tendency to disappoint, and although this was a solid effort and fairly enjoyable, it did not wow me. So, if you’ve read the previous two novels, you will certainly want to read this one as well, but it may not meet all of your expectations.
March 4, 2018
Limbus Inc. Book II edited by Brett J. Talley
Limbus, Inc. Book 2 is a shared anthology featuring some heavy hitters in the horror genre, masterfully edited by Brett Talley. Weaving into all of these stories is a shadowy hiring agency called Limbus Inc. that seems to find just the right people for a given job provided they are desperate enough to take it. The interludes that weaved in between the stories were probably my favorite part of the book. They followed a hacker who was being fed the same stories that the reader was reading. In the process, he was being lured in to work for the organization.
As for the stories, for the most part, they were high quality. The one that didn’t work for me was the one written by Gary Braunbeck. “Three Guys Walk Into a Bar”, written by Jonathan Maberry was a cool tale that features some of the characters in the series of novels that he writes thrown in together to stop an evil plot to manufacture werewolves to fight for rogue foreign governments was pretty cool. But my favorite story would have to be “Lost and Found” by Joe McKinney. It’s a story about a man down and out after losing his wife from a terrible murder who was given the opportunity to travel through time and save people who are about to be killed. The flow of the stories was great. The concept is really cool and the execution was even better. I preferred Limbus Inc. Book 3, but this anthology is a winner that is well worth reading
As for the stories, for the most part, they were high quality. The one that didn’t work for me was the one written by Gary Braunbeck. “Three Guys Walk Into a Bar”, written by Jonathan Maberry was a cool tale that features some of the characters in the series of novels that he writes thrown in together to stop an evil plot to manufacture werewolves to fight for rogue foreign governments was pretty cool. But my favorite story would have to be “Lost and Found” by Joe McKinney. It’s a story about a man down and out after losing his wife from a terrible murder who was given the opportunity to travel through time and save people who are about to be killed. The flow of the stories was great. The concept is really cool and the execution was even better. I preferred Limbus Inc. Book 3, but this anthology is a winner that is well worth reading
February 27, 2018
10 Questions with Weston Kincade
1. How does your being an English teacher influence your horror and fantasy writing?
Being an English teacher has positives and negatives when it comes to writing. It basically means that I am more than a bit OCD about the storyline, story arc, characterization, thematic elements, and various other elements. As a result, my books seem to do well. However, it also means I sometimes become bogged down in writing because I’m trying to correct too many things etc, when I should really just be trying to get the story onto the page. It’s hard to turn off the editor in my head.
2. Who has been your biggest influence as a writer?
That’s a hard one. There are inspirations and people who have supported me in my writing pursuits, but then there are numerous authors who have helped me get where I am through advice and by providing feedback on my beta reads. It’s no easy feat to write a novel, let alone multiple.
However, if I have to nail it down to just one, I think one of the biggest helps has been Scott Rhine, author of Jezebel’s Ladder and many more sci-fi and fantasy novels. He and I started publishing at the same time and met on Authonomy back when it still existed. We’ve helped each other ever since. I have a feeling we’ll be friends for life, and we haven’t even officially met yet. What a world we live in.
3. What was the inspiration for you’re A Life of Death trilogy?
I was watching Medium one evening when something occurred to me. Psychometry, the ability to relive traumatic deaths and murders through visions, supposedly develops when people are teens, but I’d never seen a show from that perspective. As Alex’s story began to unfold in my mind, his miserable life with the drunk came to fruition.
However, it wasn’t until I came up with the battlefield museum scene that I actually sat down to write the story. That scene was the first written and really the inspiration for the rest of the series. I mean, come on… who doesn’t want to see what happens to a character with psychometry when he walks through a battlefield museum?
4. Do you outline prior to writing your story, or do you work out the plot as you write?
A little of both. I tend to jot down ideas that eventually become descriptive initial character scenes, then a chapter or two. Once I have that much, an outline takes shape and I use it as a guide. However, even as I write using the outline, it’s still flexible. I’ve added and subtracted things from every book as it has progressed.
5. What current writing projects are you working on?
Really, I am all over the place. It seems that nowadays I have 4 or 5 projects going at the same time. I’m currently working on an anthology of short stories, a nonfiction piece, and two separate standalone novels, plus a few periodic short story publications for publishers.
6. How much of you is in your protagonist, Alex, in A Life of Death?
That’s a good question. Really gets to the heart of things, doesn’t it? Every author leaves a small piece of him/herself in each story he/she writes. However, A Life of Death is very personal. One of the main themes I wanted to impart in the novel is that there is always hope, no matter how bad things may be. I figured if I could reach even one person who was having a rough time and show them that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, that it is worth the struggle, then the book would be a success. As a result, I think the characters in the story became infused with some personality traits of myself and people I know. Alex is probably closer to representing my personality than any other character I will ever write, for better or worse. He isn’t me, but I believe he thinks like me. I hope that makes sense.
7. Is there an overall theme to your writing?
Every story I tell has a theme, but no they aren’t all the same. The A Life of Death trilogy, while revealing a paranormal mystery about the horrific nature of humanity, is fundamentally an inspirational novel. However, not everything I write is inspirational. My writing style seems to be a cross between Edgar Allan Poe and Steinbeck, at least those are some of my inspirations. Think the suspense, thrilling nature, and rhythm of Poe’s “The Raven” mixed with the characterization, controversy, and emotional connectedness of Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men.
8. What made you start writing?
Likely a little insanity and a bit of just-not-right. What fantasy/horror writer could you really call “normal”? But seriously, the stories are bouncing around in my head, characters banging on the walls of my skull like a skeletal cage. I have to let them out every once in a while. Better on the digital page than in a mall with men, women, and children.
9. What is your best quality as a writer?
I have good qualities? Are you sure?
Really, that’s one of my best qualities. I’m a smartass. The only other one which might matter is that I have a good ear for sentence flow. Some readers have said the flow of my sentences is almost like poetry, even though it’s narrative.
10. If you could invite five people to a dinner party (alive or dead, real or fictional) who would you invite?
That would be one truly messed up party, but I’ll give it a go. Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) would provide the ongoing witticisms (for who else but a master could lead the charge), William Shakespeare would bring the hors d’oeuvres (as a result of his tendency to pierce things with swords), J.R.R. Tolkien would bring desert (elven pudding anyone?), Robert Jordan would bring the entrees (only worry is that he’d char the pork with the One Power), Edgar Allan Poe would bring a pistol (for added excitement), and Ambrose Bierce would be a welcome but uninvited sixth who would crash the party satirically (who else could’ve written the Devil’s Dictionary). That would be one party I couldn’t miss.
Being an English teacher has positives and negatives when it comes to writing. It basically means that I am more than a bit OCD about the storyline, story arc, characterization, thematic elements, and various other elements. As a result, my books seem to do well. However, it also means I sometimes become bogged down in writing because I’m trying to correct too many things etc, when I should really just be trying to get the story onto the page. It’s hard to turn off the editor in my head.
2. Who has been your biggest influence as a writer?
That’s a hard one. There are inspirations and people who have supported me in my writing pursuits, but then there are numerous authors who have helped me get where I am through advice and by providing feedback on my beta reads. It’s no easy feat to write a novel, let alone multiple.
However, if I have to nail it down to just one, I think one of the biggest helps has been Scott Rhine, author of Jezebel’s Ladder and many more sci-fi and fantasy novels. He and I started publishing at the same time and met on Authonomy back when it still existed. We’ve helped each other ever since. I have a feeling we’ll be friends for life, and we haven’t even officially met yet. What a world we live in.
3. What was the inspiration for you’re A Life of Death trilogy?
I was watching Medium one evening when something occurred to me. Psychometry, the ability to relive traumatic deaths and murders through visions, supposedly develops when people are teens, but I’d never seen a show from that perspective. As Alex’s story began to unfold in my mind, his miserable life with the drunk came to fruition.
However, it wasn’t until I came up with the battlefield museum scene that I actually sat down to write the story. That scene was the first written and really the inspiration for the rest of the series. I mean, come on… who doesn’t want to see what happens to a character with psychometry when he walks through a battlefield museum?
4. Do you outline prior to writing your story, or do you work out the plot as you write?
A little of both. I tend to jot down ideas that eventually become descriptive initial character scenes, then a chapter or two. Once I have that much, an outline takes shape and I use it as a guide. However, even as I write using the outline, it’s still flexible. I’ve added and subtracted things from every book as it has progressed.
5. What current writing projects are you working on?
Really, I am all over the place. It seems that nowadays I have 4 or 5 projects going at the same time. I’m currently working on an anthology of short stories, a nonfiction piece, and two separate standalone novels, plus a few periodic short story publications for publishers.
6. How much of you is in your protagonist, Alex, in A Life of Death?
That’s a good question. Really gets to the heart of things, doesn’t it? Every author leaves a small piece of him/herself in each story he/she writes. However, A Life of Death is very personal. One of the main themes I wanted to impart in the novel is that there is always hope, no matter how bad things may be. I figured if I could reach even one person who was having a rough time and show them that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, that it is worth the struggle, then the book would be a success. As a result, I think the characters in the story became infused with some personality traits of myself and people I know. Alex is probably closer to representing my personality than any other character I will ever write, for better or worse. He isn’t me, but I believe he thinks like me. I hope that makes sense.
7. Is there an overall theme to your writing?
Every story I tell has a theme, but no they aren’t all the same. The A Life of Death trilogy, while revealing a paranormal mystery about the horrific nature of humanity, is fundamentally an inspirational novel. However, not everything I write is inspirational. My writing style seems to be a cross between Edgar Allan Poe and Steinbeck, at least those are some of my inspirations. Think the suspense, thrilling nature, and rhythm of Poe’s “The Raven” mixed with the characterization, controversy, and emotional connectedness of Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men.
8. What made you start writing?
Likely a little insanity and a bit of just-not-right. What fantasy/horror writer could you really call “normal”? But seriously, the stories are bouncing around in my head, characters banging on the walls of my skull like a skeletal cage. I have to let them out every once in a while. Better on the digital page than in a mall with men, women, and children.
9. What is your best quality as a writer?
I have good qualities? Are you sure?
Really, that’s one of my best qualities. I’m a smartass. The only other one which might matter is that I have a good ear for sentence flow. Some readers have said the flow of my sentences is almost like poetry, even though it’s narrative.
10. If you could invite five people to a dinner party (alive or dead, real or fictional) who would you invite?
That would be one truly messed up party, but I’ll give it a go. Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) would provide the ongoing witticisms (for who else but a master could lead the charge), William Shakespeare would bring the hors d’oeuvres (as a result of his tendency to pierce things with swords), J.R.R. Tolkien would bring desert (elven pudding anyone?), Robert Jordan would bring the entrees (only worry is that he’d char the pork with the One Power), Edgar Allan Poe would bring a pistol (for added excitement), and Ambrose Bierce would be a welcome but uninvited sixth who would crash the party satirically (who else could’ve written the Devil’s Dictionary). That would be one party I couldn’t miss.
February 22, 2018
Movie Review: Black Panther
Black Panther is another in a long line of movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe that hits the mark. Black Panther is yet another lesser known comic book superheroe that Marvel and Disney have been able to capitalize on and monetize in a big way. Black Panther has a lot to like. The first thing is that it has a strong cast, led by Chadwick Bozeman, who brings strength and dignity to the character of T’Challa, who becomes the king of the fictitious African nation of Wakanda after his father is assassinated in Captain America: Civil War. Opposite him, Michael B. Jordan delivers a strong performance as his American cousin and challenger to the throne, Eric Killmonger.
The movie delivers a compelling plot, crazy action and special effects, and lots of fight scenes. Among my favorite things in the movie are a wild car chase on the streets of South Korea and the two fight scenes where T’Challa is challenged for his throne. The setting of Wakanda was really neat. When I watched the previews I thought that part of the movie was taking place in an alien planet, but it was just Wakanda, which turns out to have far superior technology than the rest of the planet through its use of vibranium, the same metal the Captain America’s shield is composed of. This wasn’t one of the best Marvel movies, but it was fun and enjoyable and well worth watching.
The movie delivers a compelling plot, crazy action and special effects, and lots of fight scenes. Among my favorite things in the movie are a wild car chase on the streets of South Korea and the two fight scenes where T’Challa is challenged for his throne. The setting of Wakanda was really neat. When I watched the previews I thought that part of the movie was taking place in an alien planet, but it was just Wakanda, which turns out to have far superior technology than the rest of the planet through its use of vibranium, the same metal the Captain America’s shield is composed of. This wasn’t one of the best Marvel movies, but it was fun and enjoyable and well worth watching.
February 19, 2018
A Life of Death by Weston Kincade
A Life of Death starts with an interesting concept. Alex, the story’s protagonist, can relive the dying moments of a person’s life by holding something that they were touching at the time of their death. You would think there wouldn’t be many objects being touched by people as they were dying, but it turns out that Alex runs into many of these objects, especially when he hits a Civil War Museum. His life as a youth is pretty crappy. After his father dies, his mother marries a drunken loser who beats up Alex on a regular basis and is an overall abusive jackass. The character is a bit stereotypical for my liking, but provides for a nice foil in the novel.
I really enjoyed the idea behind the novel, and certain parts of it were both suspenseful and thrilling. However, there were some issues with the execution of this novel. The one that stands out is that it got a bit repetitive in spots with the many relivings of people’s final moments. In this case, less would have been more. The climax was strong but it left a bit open ended, which makes sense since this was the first novel in the series, and there should be more interesting tales to come. Overall, I found this to be an entertaining read. With a few fixes, this novel could have been even greater, but there was certainly enough entertainment value here to make it worth your while to read.
I really enjoyed the idea behind the novel, and certain parts of it were both suspenseful and thrilling. However, there were some issues with the execution of this novel. The one that stands out is that it got a bit repetitive in spots with the many relivings of people’s final moments. In this case, less would have been more. The climax was strong but it left a bit open ended, which makes sense since this was the first novel in the series, and there should be more interesting tales to come. Overall, I found this to be an entertaining read. With a few fixes, this novel could have been even greater, but there was certainly enough entertainment value here to make it worth your while to read.
