Fray, the second novel in the Unraveled Kingdom Series, fell short of the first novel in the series and my expectations. This novel continues where the other one left off. Now Sophie Balstrade no longer owns her charm/clothing shop and is set to be married to Theodor, the crown prince of the kingdom. They are set to make reforms to their nation’s feudal system of government, but are facing stiff opposition from the nobility who want to maintain the status quo.
Where this novel falls short for me is that it was overly long, and in some cases very dull. Mainly the middle part of the novel where Sophie and Theodor are traveling to Serafin for a meeting for trade among the Equitorial States was dry and often not very interesting. That’s not to say that there weren’t interesting parts in here, but much of that section should have been cut and edited down. I get the impression that the since trilogies are the order of the day in fantasy, the author and publisher wanted to make this a trilogy, but there doesn’t seem to be enough material here to make it a trilogy and keep it entertaining throughout. There also wasn’t much progression in Sophie’s and Theodor’s characters. In fact, Theodor seemed to be less interesting in this novel than he did in the first novel.
The pace of the novel picked up toward the end, and that part was more enjoyable. I’m invested enough to want to keep on reading to complete the trilogy, but with a bit less vigor than before.
I was a bit lukewarm about this novel when I first started reading it, and it took me a while to get into the story, but the more I read, the more I enjoyed this fantasy novel. My hesitation is probably that I like my fantasy novels that are a little more epic in nature with fighting and journeys and the like. This novel is lacking in those areas, but had its own appeal.
In Torn, the main characters is Sophie, a seamstress with magical abilities. She lives in a society where the nobility oppresses the common people. Revolution is fomenting, and one of the key figures is her brother, Kristos. When Sophie’s magical charms catch the attention of some of the nobility, she gets wrapped into their society and wants nothing to do with the revolution, even though she agrees with some elements of it in principle. Further complicating matters, she becomes romantically entangled with a duke. When her brother is kidnapped, she is coerced into helping the revolutionaries.
The novel was slow at first, and that was part of why I wasn’t so into it, but it built up in intrigue as it wore on. I wouldn’t exactly call it riveting, but it held my interest and had a fair bit of tension. There was even a sword fight or two, but it wasn’t particularly well described and not the strongpoint of the novel. What was a strongpoint was character development, and the ability to show merits on both sides of the opposing forces in this revolution. The natural tendency would be to side with the revolutionaries, but the nobility was presented in a sympathetic light as well, and there was a good dichotomy. This is a novel that I would recommend and I look forward to reading the next book in the series.
By the time I watched this movie, I had heard so much hype surrounding it and so many good reviews that the movie had an uphill battle to climb. This movie has crushed all pandemic records and proved that if you focus on presenting a good story and making a good movie, people will go to watch it (yes, I’m specifically referring to Marvel under the Disney umbrella, whose products have left a lot to be desired of late and they seem to have lost their way).
Spoilers ahead, so be warned. What this movie had in abundance was a nostalgia factor, bringing back almost every Spiderman villain from the previous iteration of Spiderman movies. They skipped Venom so as not to confuse people with the current Venom and Rhino, who was just lame. Having Doctor Strange in this movie also worked. My favorite part of the movie was not just bringing back the Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield to fill their previous roles as Spiderman, but when the three Spider Men worked together to thwart the movie’s villains.
I’m not sure that I was actually anticipating a good movie, given the subpar releases that were Matrix 2 and 3, but I was expecting more than the illogical, convoluted, and often times dull movie that was Matrix Resurrections. There was only one compelling scene in the entire movie. In this movie, Neo is back in the Matrix, resuming his old computer generated life, but this time he’s a software developer who created this incredible, ground breaking game called The Matrix. They are making a new version of the game twenty years later, and one of the team members working on the game said that the first Matrix was so incredibly revolutionary and mind bending. They should never have made the second and third versions of the game, and now the company they work for (Warner Brothers) is going to make a new version of the game, so they might as well take part in it. That basically sums up the real life aspects of this movie. The second and third movies should never have been made, and this last one is basically a poorly crafted money grab.
The action scenes and the special effects are remarkably worse than the original even though the technology of movie making has increased so much in that time. So many aspects of the plot don’t make any sense. Some of these include the whole reinsertion of Neo and Trinity back into the Matrix. They both died in the third movie. Dead is dead. You can’t reanimate a human corpse, even if you are sophisticated, self-aware AI. The humans now work with machines for inexplicable reasons, and are perfectly fine with most of the human raced enslaved in pods. Agent Smith’s role in this movie was never defined. He seemed to do things for the sake of doing things. Oh, and apparently Keanu Reeves deplorable acting skills haven’t shown any signs of improvement over the last couple of decades since the first movie.
I had never read any of the Dune books nor had I seen any previous movie adaptations, so the story was completely new to me. I think because of that I was missing something by watching the movie. There was much that was unexplained that would be known by someone who read the books, but was lacking for someone without any previous knowledge of the story. Which is strange, given that the movie was overly long. There was certainly plenty of opportunity to fill in the Dune novice.
This movie was a mixed bag. There was some really slow and dull stretches of the movie, mixed in between parts that were either intriguing or were good action scenes. Instead of building to a crescendo, the movie waxed and wane. Just when I would start to lose interest during a slow part, something would happen that would keep me going. Overall, the story presented was interesting. There was good action and good effects. The world building was pretty good, but it could also be a snooze fest. I think the movie would have been better served had it been about a half hour shorter and had a better pace.
Much like the second Lord of the Rings movie, Dune just kind of ends with no resolution. I feel as if a movie should have some level of resolution, even if it’s part of a series. Overall, I would give the movie a slight thumbs up, but in this case, my thumb would only be pointing slightly upward—maybe like a thirty degree angle. And while I will watch the next movie in the series, I won’t be running out to the theater on opening weekend.
