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Note: This week has been pretty much a book week because I haven’t really felt like doing anything since I came home from Croatia. Or well I did clean the house and put up some new paintings in my room, but there is no joy in that for you. Either way you will get a movie post (hopefully two) during the weekend. After that the plan is to finish of some of the book series I have started, play some PC games and watch some unknown and new movies. The Game part might be an issue because my laptop is not the best gaming platform, so I’ll steal my mother’s pc. But since it is my mother’s it might take some time to finish of those games. So that is the plan and now on to the review:

This is the book that is on everyone’s list to finish as soon as possible. With Margret Sthol, one of the Beautiful Creatures authors writing this one the hype has been huge and many seem to think that this will be the upcoming best seller. Unfortunately for the book itself it was more of a failure and an immense disappointment.

After an alien invasion all electricity has been wiped out and millions of lives have been lost. Dol and her friend Ro are not like everyone else, they can do things others can’t and they survived when their families died. After being captured they finally realize why they are different and they meet two more like themselves.

This was all so bad! The plot brought nothing new, the characters were mainly an unlikable mess and there were only two background characters in the book that I sort of liked. I did not like the way that to story carried out. I did not like the setting and I certainly did not like the ending. The descriptions of everything in the book were so strange, I did not really get the deal with the invaders and they were supposed to be a threat, but they were not described as it. Then you also had an embassy which was also supposed to be evil, which it did not really seem like.

Everything was just so out of place and blurry. I had expected something special, but this was mainly over hyped and not my story at all. This was just a huge failure in my eyes and I won’t be picking up the sequel. 3/10

Scarlet

Just as I promised here is the review of the sequel to Cinder and the second book in the Lunar Chronicles. This time it’s not only a fairytale retelling of Cinderella, but also the red riding hood like the cover suggests.  As always I will try my best to avoid spoilers, but since it’s the second book it might be a bit harder.

In this book we meet Scarlet, a girl from France who’s on a mission to find her missing grandma. We also get to follow Cinder as she must deal with the consequences of what she learned the last time we saw her. She now needs to figure out which path to take and that somehow all connects back to Scarlet and her grandmother.

So, we got to met Scarlett. Well I am mostly mad about that, sure she was a well written character, but we got an abrupt ending in the last book and I wanted to follow Cinder’s story. Cinder is a much better character in every aspect and the whole time I was reading about Scarlet I just wanted to skim through the chapters. Luckily enough Cinder does get about 40 % of the book so it’s not a complete disaster. Sure it does all connect in the end, but I found it to be a bunch of annoying chapters with a plot that was way worse than the first book.

Cinder’s story and awesome character makes up for most of it. We do get some other interesting perspectives as well, namely Emperor Kai and Queen Levenas’.  There were just a few pages but it was fun to read through their eyes and it was certainly a lot better than Scarlet’s story. The book is still very well written and the world is interesting. The ending gave me a lot of promise for the next book. Seeing as the book titles represents persons I still don’t dare to hope to much since there are unfamiliar names on both the future book, which means new characters.

It’s still a good book but it was way worse than Cinder. So now I just hope that the others will be better because I will be picking them up once they are released. Luckily Marissa Mayer has made some short stories connected to the series, so if I can get a hold of them the wait for the upcoming sequels may not be too long. 7 / 10

Review of the previous book:

Cinder

Cinder

Hello everyone! I’m finally back and during my trip I finished four books. So you will get some book reviews this week and I will give you the review of the sequel to Cinder tomorrow. Cinder was a book I never really wanted to read, but a librarian convinced me to read it anyways, which was really good since I absolutely loved this book. It came out last year and it’s a fairytale retelling of Cinderella, set in a dystopian society.

Cinder is a cyborg who lives and works as a mechanic in New Beijing. One day the prince drops by asking Cinder to fix his android and then everything in Cinders life changes. The plague hits close to home, turning Cinders life into a mess and it later appears that Cinder may not be just a plain useless cyborg anymore.

Now this is wonderful, a sci-fi book with terrific characters that I absolutely loved. Cinder is amazing and her cyborg qualities make the book fun to read.  The other characters are great as well, the android in Cinders family is a nice addition to the book and I found her entertaining. Prince Kai and Queen Leveana are well written interesting characters as well. I liked the plot a lot and I liked the plot twists. Some of them were slightly predictable, but it did not really bother me since the characters made it fun to read those parts as well.

Everything was pretty perfect in this book, the setting the way they made the romance work so it was not the typical idiotic love at first sight, but more of a “he is a celebrity and I adore him” kind of romance. It does feel kind of strange writing a positive review when I’m not equally happy about the sequel, so I’m going to cut it short and say that Cinder is an amazing book and I would really recommend it. So in the end my skepticism was pretty dumb and I should have read this book sooner. 10 / 10

In the beginning I hated the cover, but it serves its purpose and the foot was implanted quite a few times in the book. Unfortunately I did not get the Cinderella shoe connection until the very end *makes a facepalm*.

Oblivion

Another new movie review. This one is in the Sci-fi genre so I was very happy. It is about a man who is sent to Earth gather resources from it. Once he is there her starts remembering things and discovers things about his past.

I loved the setting! Everything in the movie looked visually amazing! The plot was excellent, in the beginning… Then it started to feel like a story I have seen before and really did not want to see. The only difference from the bad story I did not want to see was the Sci-Fi elements that at least made it look nice to watch. I had really not expected the story to get so bad and what confused me even more was that there was no redemption once the plot started to worsen.

I have ever rally been a big fan of Tom Cruise. I know that he can act and be good at it but somehow I have never really got “what’s so great about him”. That being said I thought he was really good in this movie even though I thought he had a bad plot to work with.

This review will be really short, but right now I am half way through a Swedish movie that I will be most likely extremely disappointed with, so that one will probably longer. As far as Oblivion goes I still think it’s a good movie, the acting and the visuals makes up for a lot, but unfortunately the story destroys a movie that could have been fantastic, by turning it to a movie that is just good. 7 / 10

 

Divergent

Veronica Roth has made one of the most talked about YA book series now, forget about Twilight and The Hunger Games because now it is all about this dystopian series and I am so glad that I have finally read it.

The world is divided into factions and as Beatrice is now 16-years-old to choose which ones she wants to live in for the rest of her life. Beatrice was born in the Abnegation (the selfless) faction and breaking from that faction means abandoning and breaking the contact with everyone from her old faction. The other factions she can join are: Candor (the honest), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). It all comes down to the choice, and how it will change her life forever.

In the beginning I was not completely impressed with the story but things got better and better. Beatrice (or Tris as she also will be called) is a nice main character, she is not so stereotypical and I like her thought patterns. The background characters are good as well and I think the factions are a nice way of making sensible characters that works well with the plot.

The book is in one of my favorite genres and it was lovely to see that the romance was kept in the background and when it was there it did not bother me at all. The story is very good as well and it has the right amount of complexity in it. For some reason I won’t praise it to the sky as much as many others have done, sure it was a really, really good book, but not the best one I have ever read. (Which is what most seem to think). I do however feel that it will keep improve in the next book and I will be looking forward to see what will happen in the sequels.  9 / 10

172 Hours on the Moon

This will be a pretty long, but hopefully good post so prepare yourselves… Woho, another book review and this time it’s from the Norwegian author Johan Harstad and he gave me a sci-fi book and horror book. So this was pretty much perfect, two of my favorite genres and some astronomy, which I used to like as a kid. The English version of this young adult book came out last year. As I saw the Swedish cover (its three kids with the moon and earth in the background) I thought it was kind of standard, it suits the book but I thought the English ones were more fun, so I’ll let you look at them later.

It had been years since anyone has been on the moon and NASA has a shortage of money and they therefore launch a competition where three teens will win a 172 hour trip to the moon. The winners are a girl from Norway, a girl from Japan and a boy from France. As they set of to the moon they realize that a danger is lurking on the moon and the teens might have won themselves a one way ticket.

This was a nice new idea that I had not, seen heard about or read before. Innovation is key to success and I felt that they pulled that one off here. The book did not succeed in every aspect but in the end it was all so perfect that I almost forgot about the things I disliked at first. The good thing is that the book gets better and better but I thought that about 40% of the first part in the book was a bit to slow paced. The main characters were not that good at first but they grew one me.

Another thing was the third person point of view, there were a lot of characters in the book and I thought it was a bit too much and a bit blurry in the beginning, especially the old man in the elderly home. Hi was more of an annoyance but he did serve his purpose in the end. Now I have pretty much only blabbed about the bad things but you need to be aware of them and you need to continue to read. Because after they have arrived on the moon the plot is pretty much action packed. The book even contained pictures and some other fun elements to make up for the 150 paged slow beginning.

Example of a picture found in the book

In the end it is worth a read since everything about the book improves in the later parts. I thought that the last twenty pages were a little disappointing, but then the shocking ending came and instant happiness on my part occurred. So I would greatly, greatly recommend the book and I would advise so patience while you are reading it. 8 / 10

Paperback versus hardcover versus e-book. Who will win the battle folks? Let me know! 🙂

After Earth

Movies always come in time periods for me and right now I am not really in the mood for movies. So I decided to watch a new one to get me back in the right mood. I had seen the trailer and I thought it was going to be fun to watch a movie with Will Smith in it again. His son Jayden is also in it and everyone wants to see if he is equally good as his father.

After a crash landing a father and his son gets stuck on planet Earth. The father is injured and the sun must journey in order to be able to send for help. The problem is that Earth has changed and every animal has evolved to kill humans…

I don’t know if it was the trailer that caught me but this is just ridiculous! It is embarrassing to say how bad it was and how disappointed I am. The plot was awful, there was nothing that unique about it and the ending was way too predictable. Sure Will did a job that barely manages to qualify as a decent acting job but with an annoying and bad character there was just no way that it was going to get good.

To make things worse Jayden Smith did not exactly show of his best side. Both his acting skills and his character were bad… Even his voice was annoying! Giving him the typical role of “I will be going on an adventure to save someone” did not exactly help either. I also felt that the plot was pretty shallow, we have seen similar stories before and since it only scratched the surface of what could have been I ended up not caring about the plot at all.

Some say that you should always end on a positive not and the positive side was the visuals. I thought they were good but good visuals can’t save a movie that fails in every other aspect. 4 / 10 and I am being nice here… If you don’t believe me then check out the IMDB ratings, I took a look at them after having watched the movie and they gave me quite a chuckle.

The Host

Firstly I’d like to thank everyone for the 2000 hits! I really appreciate it and I’m planning to add some things to my blog shortly (perhaps it will all be finished on Monday.) Spoiling things is never fun so this is the only info I will give you for now. 

I have had the host (by Stephanie Meyer) for about three years! I don’t know why I never read it but since the movie was going to come out I made it my mission to finish the book before seeing the movie. Now that I wanted to read the book the book was gone! I have been looking for it during the last month but it seems to have gone to outer space. So I borrowed an audio book. Unfortunately you could hear that it was a bored old woman reading the story to you. So it seems like there is some higher power who don’t want me to read the book, so I haven’t.

The story we learn that humans have changed, taken over by invisible terrestrial creatures (the hosts) who takes over their bodies and thereby striving to take over the body of every single human. Our main character is a human (Melanie) who recently had her body taken over by a host. Melanie is fighting the host as she knows remaining human survivors. As she struggles to stop the host from killing her family she mentally forces the host to go against its orders and interesting consequences will follow.

Well I’m not entirely happy with the description but it was as good as I could do.  The last movie I watched without reading the book was Beautiful Creatures. Unlike Beautiful creatures (which did not really have a single aspect I liked) The Host was an improvement. It had interesting aspects to the story even though there were some things I did not like. I liked the idea of the hosts but one of the things that got annoying was listening to Melanie screaming inside her host’s head.

The second thing was the middle to almost last part of the movie. It was the build up and things happened, but they did not grab me and I found it quite unsatisfactory to be losing interest at the storyline’s peak. The ending was pretty nice, not great, not bad, but just simply nice. Tough I would have skipped the epilogue as I am always a bit weary when it comes to “amount of time late” and I think it did not work so well in this case .Luckily the song Radioactive (by Imagine Dragons) appeared and saved the day.

Unlike beautiful creatures I feel like reading The Host may actually be slightly tempting, not by a lot but slightly. So if I find my book I will read it, but until then I will just see the host as a fairly decent move. A strong six it is, 6 / 10

Melancholia

I never liked Kirsten Dunst but after seeing her in the awsome movie Upside Down my viewpoint changed. Unfortunately the drama movie Melancholia (2011) ruined it all again.

During a wedding gone wrong things quickly change from depression to a new planet. This planet has been hidden by the sun and now it’s coming closer, closer and closer to colliding with earth.

This was not the plot at all, or well it was in a way but the feeling was completely different. To start of I should mention that the movie is about two hours long. For the first hour nothing happened, and the hour could have easily have been narrowed down to 15 minutes. It was almost pathetic how the characters were in the same place, doing the same uninspiring thing for half the movie. It got a bit better towards the second half but the movie still felt dragged out and boring. This is not supposed to be a feel good movie but I wished that they would have done something.

The main character is mentally unwell and in the beginning I bought it, but the longer I watched the movie the less convincing it became. Why? All the characters were plain, badly acted and the actions the main character did made you feel nothing for her and end up not caring about her at all.

The only thing I did like was the ending. I had been waiting for an ending like his for ages! Ages and when I finally got it, it felt good, tough not good enough to make me like the movie. Still it was the ending I needed to not absolutely despise this movie.

Seriously tough, I do think a lot of people will like this kind of movie. It has a subtle drama, an attempt to create complex characters even though I did not buy it and the plot line is pretty special in some aspects. Still I had expected a different story but the ending and being a movie about marriage but with no happiness was enough to raise my score by two points. 4 / 10

Imdb

Matched

The first book in the very hyped trilogy by Ally Condie. It’s a young adult book with romance and it’s all set in a dystopian future.

Sometimes one can get worried about how much information the government has over mere individuals. This book takes it even further. Here everything is controlled, who you will marry, who you will love, where you will work your entire life and even the date you die is set. These things are only scratching the surface and you will learn more and more about how everything is controlled while reading it.

The protagonist in the series is Clarissa, a 17-year-old girl who is in the age where she gets matched with the one she will spend her life with and her carrier will also be chosen for her. While she is matched something weird happens and suddenly she gets new experiences which will give her an insight in how everything around her is controlled. Clarissa does not want to be a part of it, but what can one do in a society where all information is extremely limited and no options can be found to escape it?

This is a book appreciated by everyone and I loved the cover so I decided to read it for myself. The first 50 pages did not really grab my attention, a lot happened but I did not really care so much about it. Tough I do think that the beginning explains everything very well and it gives you enough information you need.

I did like the cover a lot so I was surprised when the dress on the cover where worn by Clarissa (who is also on the cover) and the glass bubble fitted into the plot perfectly. I also really liked the dystopian world she is living in; it gave me some reflective thoughts on everything to surveillance, democracy and technology.

What could possibly ruin a book so good for me? – Triangle drama! I do usually hate romance in books (though I do acknowledge that they are needed) and the one thing I hate more that romance is triangle dramas. None of the two male characters were that good but I didn’t hate them (which I really thought I would).

Now you think that I hate the book, but it was actually amazing! I loved everything about the main character and the world. The romance should have ruined it, but it was kept on a low level so I actually liked that part as well. Tough I do think that there might be more triangle drama and romance in the next book. Overall I loved the book, I would really recommend it and the ending gives you enough suspense to want to read the second book. 9 / 10