Ricky Pine's Blog, page 121
August 14, 2016
Suicide Squad: Damaged...By Hype
***MINOR SPOILERS***
Let me just preface this review by saying, despite the title I came up with for it, I did actually like Suicide Squad. It's not exactly up to Marvel standards, but it delivers as a psychotically colorful action movie about the Worst. Heroes. Ever.
I wouldn't pick that 'shroom if I were you.
Those Worst Heroes Ever are, at the very least, excellently portrayed on screen by a talented cast. What really hurts the movie, however, is its writing, which, combined with the sto...
Let me just preface this review by saying, despite the title I came up with for it, I did actually like Suicide Squad. It's not exactly up to Marvel standards, but it delivers as a psychotically colorful action movie about the Worst. Heroes. Ever.
I wouldn't pick that 'shroom if I were you.Those Worst Heroes Ever are, at the very least, excellently portrayed on screen by a talented cast. What really hurts the movie, however, is its writing, which, combined with the sto...
Review: Black Iris
Black Iris by Leah RaederMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
When I took my first creative writing class (spring 2014), there was quite a variation in genres for all the manuscripts and/or short stories me and my classmates were working on. They ranged from a pretty standard Fincher-like cop-chases-serial-killer thriller with an obvious twist to a somewhat Chandler-esque crime story set in the desert Southwest. They ranged from my best friend's fantasy world way beyond human comprehension (spoiler ale...
August 13, 2016
Review: The Serpent King
The Serpent King by Jeff ZentnerMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
OFFICIAL THE SERPENT KING PLAYLIST:
"Sometimes the only payoff for having any faith
Is when it's tested again and again every day!"
-Fall Out Boy, "Immortals"
"Love will tear us apart...again."
-Joy Division
"It's just a reflection of a reflection...
Will I see you on the other side?
We've all got things to hide..."
-Arcade Fire, "Reflektor"
"All you sinners stand up, sing hallelujah!
Show praise with your body, stand up, sing hallelujah!
And if...
August 11, 2016
Review: Razorhurst
Razorhurst by Justine LarbalestierMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
I've been following Justine Larbalestier for a while on Twitter, and she's got a lot to say on the craft of writing - and also about how to write (and how not to write) diverse books. Her books, however, are a little hard to find at the library, so it's taken me a while to get ahold of one. And while I'm hoping that some of her other stories are a better indicator of the talent behind her tweets, this book, I'm sorry to say, fails t...
August 10, 2016
Review: The Ask and the Answer
The Ask and the Answer by Patrick NessMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Picking up roughly where The Knife of Never Letting Go left off, The Ask and the Answer gets into some seriously warped mind games as Todd and Viola are forced to negotiate a new, and increasingly dangerous, landscape. (Without Manchee. Boo. Or, more accurately, "poo.")
Power plays are the word of the day, every day, in this book. Torture, of humans and Spackle alike, forms huge chunks of the pages here, and in the end, it's just...
August 9, 2016
Review: Tell the Wind and Fire
Tell the Wind and Fire by Sarah Rees BrennanMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Full disclosure: I've never read A Tale of Two Cities, so any references to that book in this one are all but lost on me.
That said, it's a unique enough book, updating Dickens' classic with magic and modern social commentary in an alternate New York where the Lights live in luxury and the Darks in walled-off ghettos like the Nazis took over the place. Naturally, the Lights hold all the cards, and the Darks are tired of bei...
August 6, 2016
Review: Titans
Titans by Victoria ScottMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
A nice big thanks to the Wattpad4 for bringing Victoria Scott and Titans to my attention!
Going into this, I noticed that a lot of reviews, not without reason, compared this book to Maggie Stiefvater's The Scorpio Races, mostly because of the stories' shared plots involving some kind of genre twist on horses and horse racing. I have to say, though, that I preferred Scott's relatively little-known story over Stiefvater's heavily-hyped one.
For...
Review: Into the Dim
Into the Dim by Janet B. TaylorMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
I wanted to like this book, being that it was a YA Outlander with a harder sci-fi twist straight out of Tomorrowland. Sadly, while Into the Dim starts strong, after the long info-dump that explains (to an extent) how the Tesla-based time travel tech works (and I liked how the machine's able to prevent you from arriving at a moment right as you're leaving, to ensure no time paradoxes of any kind), it turns into a real slog to read, plag...
August 5, 2016
Review: Shade Me
Shade Me by Jennifer BrownMy rating: 1 of 5 stars
The only things this book has going for it are the pretty cover (which, with its combo of black-and-white and neon stripes, reminds me strongly of the ill-fated Arclight series) and its protagonist having synesthesia (a most interesting condition.) Unfortunately, the book, as a side effect of being set in Hollywood, is laden with so many virtually indistinguishable pretty and/or superficial people (and I mean indistinguishable - for a while...
August 4, 2016
Review: A Monster Calls
A Monster Calls by Patrick NessMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
So apparently The Knife of Never Letting Go wasn't my first Patrick Ness book after all. Turns out I read this one...three years ago? And I wasn't impressed at first, for whatever reason, and managed to forget I ever read it to begin with.
But now that I've picked the book up again in anticipation of the forthcoming movie, I know what I was clearly missing.
Like Knife, this book is shelved in the YA section at the library despite contain...
