Sci-Fi

Clean Sweep (Innkeeper Chronicles #1) By: Ilona Andrews

Clean Sweep

Clean Sweep (Innkeeper Chronicles #1) By: Ilona Andrews

Plot:

On the outside, Dina Demille is the epitome of normal. She runs a quaint Victorian Bed and Breakfast in a small Texas town, owns a Shih Tzu named Beast, and is a perfect neighbor, whose biggest problem should be what to serve her guests for breakfast. But Dina is…different: Her broom is a deadly weapon; her Inn is magic and thinks for itself. Meant to be a lodging for otherworldly visitors, the only permanent guest is a retired Galactic aristocrat who can’t leave the grounds because she’s responsible for the deaths of millions and someone might shoot her on sight. Under the circumstances, “normal” is a bit of a stretch for Dina. And now, something with wicked claws and deepwater teeth has begun to hunt at night….Feeling responsible for her neighbors, Dina decides to get involved. Before long, she has to juggle dealing with the annoyingly attractive, ex-military, new neighbor, Sean Evans—an alpha-strain werewolf—and the equally arresting cosmic vampire soldier, Arland, while trying to keep her inn and its guests safe. But the enemy she’s facing is unlike anything she’s ever encountered before. It’s smart, vicious, and lethal, and putting herself between this creature and her neighbors might just cost her everything.

Review:

I waited a while before reading this Ilona Andrews book. I knew, at the time, that she was posting it in chapters on her website, but I chose to wait until it was done. Then I kind of forgot about it until the second book was published as well. Wow, was not expecting this.

Clean Sweep is a supernatural/Sci-Fi mix and I love it! I can understand why this wasn’t published traditionally because it’s probably a hard sell, but I’m so glad they found a way to get it out there.

Dina is a great heroine, she’s smart and capable but not overpowered. Her Inn is just as interesting. She is also, not like I feared, anything like Kate Daniels. She is very much a new character.

Loved the world that was created and teased, since it was a shorter book there wasn’t as much as I would like, but there was still a fair amount of info. Really looking forward to the next book and I’m already sad there’s only one more.

5/5

 

Winter (The Lunar Chronicles #4) By: Marissa Meyer

Winter

Winter (The Lunar Chronicles #4) By: Marissa Meyer

Plot:

Princess Winter is admired by the Lunar people for her grace and kindness, and despite the scars that mar her face, her beauty is said to be even more breathtaking than that of her stepmother, Queen Levana.

Winter despises her stepmother, and knows Levana won’t approve of her feelings for her childhood friend—the handsome palace guard, Jacin. But Winter isn’t as weak as Levana believes her to be and she’s been undermining her stepmother’s wishes for years. Together with the cyborg mechanic, Cinder, and her allies, Winter might even have the power to launch a revolution and win a war that’s been raging for far too long.

Can Cinder, Scarlet, Cress, and Winter defeat Levana and find their happily ever afters?

Review:

I had no idea how she was going to wrap everything up in just this book, but Meyer managed to do it and I don’t feel left wanting. Well—I would have preferred an epilogue more like from Harry Potter, but I understand why she did what she did and I’m fine with it.

So much happened in this book, so much, and there were like fifty characters to manage, but I never forgot who was who or got lost or confused. It was over eight hundred pages of shit going down.

Worlds were changed and romances were kind of taken care of. Actually, that might be my least favorite part about the Lunar Chronicles, apart from Cinder (book 1 not the character) romance takes a back seat to politics and worlds stuff. It’s there in every book, but it’s not the driving force. It’s a nice change for a fairy tale re-telling, but I just wish there’d been a little bit more.

Overall, the series was awesome and this book was a satisfying conclusion so I’m happy.

5/5

Aftermath (Star Wars: Aftermath #1) By: Chuck Wendig

star-wars-aftermath-625x951

Aftermath (Star Wars: Aftermath #1) By: Chuck Wendig

Plot:

Journey to The Force Awakens.

The second Death Star is destroyed. The Emperor and his powerful enforcer, Darth Vader, are rumored to be dead. The Galactic Empire is in chaos.

Across the galaxy, some systems celebrate, while in others Imperial factions tighten their grip. Optimism and fear reign side by side.

And while the Rebel Alliance engages the fractured forces of the Empire, a lone Rebel scout uncovers a secret Imperial meeting…

Review:

So I’m a fan of Chuck Wendig’s blog, if he hadn’t written this book I probably still would have read it, but I might not have been as excited for it. I’ve read a couple of his books and I’ve enjoyed them, but they weren’t a genre I read much and they were darker and more depressing than I like. Aftermath was dark but I always had hope, which is what I like about Star Wars. Bad stuff happens, but there’s always hope.

Reading this made me feel like I was in the Star Wars universe, a diverse more realistic Star Wars universe. There were just as many female characters as there were male, which I greatly appreciated. The lingo was spot on for me and I could see the world that was created being right at home in the galaxy, though apparently some superfans had some issues.

I loved Norra, so freakin much. She was a mother but she was an amazing pilot. She made hard decisions, decisions I don’t know if I could make, and she accepted the consequences of them.

It’s actually a tossup who I loved the most, Norra or Jas the female bounty hunter. Honestly I was just happy to see some very capable female characters that were likeable but not perfect. Whenever you complain about the lack of female characters in Star Wars people are like, there’s Leia and Padme. Yeah, two characters with any screen time. Two. The fact that Aftermath had a proportionate number of women to men was refreshing and I would expect nothing less from Wendig.

I ended up purchasing the book after an epic quest across multiple stores because I didn’t want to wait for Amazon to ship the book and me to get it probably beat all to hell. However, I did read some reviews on Amazon and I was amazed at the amount of hate for this book.

Some people hated the fact that it was written in present tense. I can understand not liking it for that reason, it was a style choice by Wendig and I thought that it made the situations more urgent, but it did take me a few chapters to get use too. That didn’t make me hate the book, though.

Other people hated it because it completely wiped out cannon that they had spent years loving and analyzing. Not Wendig’s fault, if you have to hate on someone for that hate on Disney, otherwise get your panties out of knot and get over it.

The real assholes hated it because they felt it was pushing some kind of homosexual agenda. There was a gay character, but the amount of word space used on his sexual preference didn’t fill a paragraph. Temmin had lesbian aunts that were in the book for maybe a chapter, and the fact that they liked to get all up in each other’s vaginas was not talked about. There was also an instance where an orphan mentioned seeing his father’s die in front of him. Those are the only mentions I can remember and they were tiny. I do not see that as pushing an agenda, so if that offended you enough to write a scathing review, I think it says more about you than the book.

I really enjoyed Aftermath and thought it was a great addition to a galaxy I love. I look forward to reading the rest of the trilogy and I hope Wendig doesn’t kill off any of the characters I now love.

4.5/5

 

Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens (2015)

star-wars-the-force-awakens

Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens (2015)

Director:

J.J. Abrams

Starring:

Daisy Ridley

John Boyega

Oscar Isaac

Plot:

Three decades after the defeat of the Galactic Empire, a new threat arises. The First Order attempts to rule the galaxy and only a ragtag group of heroes can stop them, along with the help of the Resistance.

Review:

***Some Spoilers***

I waited until I’d seen this movie twice before I sat down to write a review. I worked very hard to keep my expectations low for this movie. Up until the trailers that was really easy to do, still I managed and I think that helped me enjoy it better. I went in with no theories or desires and I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it even more on the second viewing.

I loved the new characters, they were each so awesome that I flip flop between my favorite. I loved the fact that the main lead was a woman, I know I’ve had Leia and Padme in the last movies but it was different this time. I even liked BB-8.

What I didn’t like or really wished they’d spent more work on were the villains. Kylo Ren was a whinny little boy and I really just wanted to smack him, there was none of the fear that Vader evoked. Captain Phasma was barely in the movie which made all her merchandising misleading. Even the bad dude pulling Ren’s strings wasn’t scary. As a whole they were all seriously lacking.

I’m sure some of that will be fixed in the next movie, but I’m getting tired of movies being used to build up their sequels. Marvel is doing that way too much lately and it’s bothering me.

Anyway, this movie did not ruin my childhood and it was not the second coming, but it was a good addition to the series.

4/5

Scarlet (The Lunar Chronicles #2) By: Marissa Meyer

Scarlet

Scarlet (The Lunar Chronicles #2) By: Marissa Meyer

Plot:

Cinder, the cyborg mechanic, returns in the second thrilling installment of the bestselling Lunar Chronicles. She’s trying to break out of prison–even though if she succeeds, she’ll be the Commonwealth’s most wanted fugitive.

Halfway around the world, Scarlet Benoit’s grandmother is missing. It turns out there are many things Scarlet doesn’t know about her grandmother or the grave danger she has lived in her whole life. When Scarlet encounters Wolf, a street fighter who may have information as to her grandmother’s whereabouts, she is loath to trust this stranger, but is inexplicably drawn to him, and he to her. As Scarlet and Wolf unravel one mystery, they encounter another when they meet Cinder. Now, all of them must stay one step ahead of the vicious Lunar Queen Levana, who will do anything for the handsome Prince Kai to become her husband, her king, her prisoner.

Review:

After Cinder’s ending I didn’t expect Scarlet to start off with an entirely new character. It took me a little bit to get into it because of that. However, once I did I ended up liking Scarlet more than Cinder.

The world keeps on growing in this series with Scarlet taking place in France. It’s incredibly interesting to see the tech and how wide reaching the fear and prejudice is for Lunars. The Queen makes a great villain and you discover more about her in this book.

Honestly, my only complaint is that while a lot happened I’m impatient for a final resolution. It took Cinder the entire book to basically man up and even then she was kicking and screaming the entire time.

I had to force myself not to buy the next book in the series, only because at this point I’ve checked them all out from the library so it doesn’t make sense to just randomly own the third book in a series. Thank goodness I was able to pick it up fairly quickly. Very excited to see what Meyer does next.

4.5/5