Hunting Season (The Twenty-Sided Sorceress #4) By: Annie Bellet

Hunting Season

Hunting Season (The Twenty-Sided Sorceress #4) By: Annie Bellet

Plot:

Demons. Assassins. Angry druids. Just what gamer and sorceress Jade Crow needs to help her days feel complete. All her hits will have to be crits to get out of this one.

Review:

So happy with this series. I love all the gaming and pop culture references, even though I don’t always get them. I love the magic and world that’s been created. I love the characters, major and minor. I’m so happy I found these books.

Hunting Season progressed the over arching story of the evil ex-boyfriend sorcerer Samir by a lot, but it still had its own story that was the normal fast paced, butt kicking, magic filled adventure.

The only negative I had was that since it’s been a little while since I read the previous books it took me a little while to remember who everyone was. There wasn’t really a catch up or introduction for people. You just had to know.

Still really looking forward to the next installment.

4.5/5

Chef (2014)

chef

Chef (2014)

Director:

Jon Favreau

Starring:

Jon Favreau

John Leguizamo

Scarlett Johansson

Robert Downy Jr.

Plot:

A chef who loses his restaurant job starts up a food truck in an effort to reclaim his creative promise, while piecing back together his estranged family.

Review:

Food porn. So much food porn. It was amazing, but this is coming from a person that can spend hours watching Food Network.

The story was as much about a man getting his culinary groove back as it was about him reconnecting with his son. I could see why some people might find it slow, there’s a lot of shots of food and cooking, but it looked amazing. So much wonderful food. Yummy.

I liked the movie but I wouldn’t recommend it to someone who doesn’t care about cooking.

4/5

*Watched this again recently and liked it just as much. If you aren’t hungry after watching this you’re doing it wrong.

Kings of the World By: Matt J. Pike

kings of the world

Kings of the World By: Matt J. Pike

Plot:

The galaxy is on the brink of war and only four dysfunctional, hormone-driven teenagers from Earth stand in its way. God help us all. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nbx3us… It didn’t take Cooper long to come to the conclusion that space sucks. It seems everyone there despises humans, everything’s too far away and the travel makes you heave. Worse still, Cooper’s stuck there with his best mate, The Ginge – who can’t tell where games end and reality begins – and two other former classmates who want to beat the crap out of him. Oh yeah, and people, well… alien people are trying to kill them. Space does have some good points. The boys can have anything they wish for, all they have to do is ask it … or think it. Plus they are now, somehow, Earth’s leaders – as in, more important than the President of the USA. If Cooper can only stop the other boys from gorging on their every desire, chasing the most human looking alien women and fighting each other he might convince everyone humans aren’t the galactic equivalent of white trash. But things are about to get a whole lot worse. War looms and Cooper and his inept sidekicks are caught in the middle. They, the Earth and the Galaxy will never be the same again.

Review:

I was pretty apprehensive about whether or not I would like this book. The plot sounded interesting but the protagonist were all teenage boys. I hate teenagers, they’re all emotional and in the case of boys they’re obsessed with one thing.

That being said, oh my god I want to read the next book NOW!

Pike did a great job portraying teenage boys, right down to the obsession with sex, but it never became so overwhelming that it derailed the story. Each boy had their strengths and weaknesses, and while there was plenty of character growth, none of the boys ended up being perfect. They still had their weaknesses and the areas of growth they had were entirely believable.

There were a couple parts that seemed kind of farfetched that teenage boys could accomplish, oddly enough not the parts where they saved the political future of the galaxy, it was more the space battle following that part.

The world created was interesting and I really want to know what happens with Knuckles, surprisingly he started out as my least favorite of the boys. The next book comes out in 2015 and I’m excited to see what happens next.

4.5/5

Let’s Be Cops (2014)

Lets be cops

Let’s Be Cops

Director:

Luke Greenfield

Starring:

Jake Johnson

Damon Wayne Jr.

Rob Riggle

Plot:

Two struggling pals dress as police officers for a costume party and become neighborhood sensations. But when these newly-minted “heroes” get tangled in a real life web of mobsters and dirty detectives, they must put their fake badges on the line.

Review:

Any movie that starts off with Backstreet Boys automatically gets points with me. No idea why since I was never a fan, but damn it makes me smile.

I don’t know how anyone can think that pretending to be cops is a good idea. They take it even farther by getting a cop car and making it look as authentic as possible. I get that this is comedy and I was laughing, but let’s be real for a minute, that’s a fucking dumb idea.

When that naked dude came running out it was fucking hilarious.

The bad guy is a bit too psychotic. I’m not an expert in drug trafficking and gangs and all that shit, but I really think he’s a little too in to killing people to get that big. I don’t know. Maybe he killed his way to the top. It just looked like he enjoyed shooting up his money and drugs a bit too much in his pursuit to kill.

I thought it was a little long and kind of lost its focus right before the end, but I liked it. It was funny, and even though I called the ending, I had fun. I would not be adverse to a sequel. It made over one hundred million, so that’s pretty good, but the critic reception has been very negative. Who knows what will happen.

4/5

The Change (Unbounded #1) By: Teyla Branton

The Change

The Change (Unbounded #1) By: Teyla Branton

Plot:

There are only two ways to kill Unbounded, and fire isn’t one of them—as law school dropout Erin Radkey learns the hard way. By fluke of a recessive gene, she has become Unbounded, a nearly immortal being with paranormal abilities. Erin’s Change separates her from her loved ones and alters everything she believes to be true. A week earlier she was considering a marriage proposal; now she contemplates the best way to stay alive. Caught in a battle between two Unbounded groups, she is also hunted by a secret mortal society sworn to eradicate the Unbounded gene. Worse, a new identification software could mean death for all Unbounded—or enslavement for the entire mortal world. As Erin plunges into this dangerous new life, she must carve out her own place in the madness, protect her mortal family, and decide which group she should join. Her powerful attraction to Ritter Langton, whose family was massacred by opposing Unbounded two hundred and forty years ago, complicates her choices. There are no second chances. Death, life, or love—Unbounded always play for keeps. Non-stop action, terrifying consequences, and powerful romance make this an exciting addition to the world of urban fantasy.

Review:

I put this book down several times in the first few chapters. I love urban fantasy but I didn’t like this heroine and that’s one sure way for me not to enjoy a book.

Erin started out like normal, then she almost died a fiery death, then she found out she was pretty much immortal, and started to develop a kind of empathic power. That’s just in the first week. The whole story took less than two weeks and by the end she was able to do things with her power that the more experienced could. I really didn’t find her progression believable.

She also flip flopped a lot. These people are liars, no these people are liars. I love this man, no I love this one. I thought at first the man thing was just her power and not knowing how to control it, but nope. At the beginning of the book she was all about one dude then with almost no notice she was all about another one. Every now and then her feelings for the first one would show up but that didn’t stop her in the end.

Pretty much everyone lied to her, on both sides of the war, and everyone was her father. Not really, but by the end of the book there were three men that thought she was their daughter.

I thought there was too much going on and the character and story progression could have been written better. I could see what Branton was trying to do but she didn’t pull it off for me. Since there are almost 600 reviews and it’s got about a 4.25 rating I’m very obviously in the minority, but that’s ok.

I want to clarify, this was not a bad book, it just wasn’t for me. That happens.

2.5/5