The Name of The Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

Hello friends! It’s been quite a while since I’ve written anything, a hiatus should be expected every so often, but I continue!

I’ve been excited to read this book for a long time, my local bookstore had it on sale for a few months and I’d been going back and forth on if I should get it or not, due to my not knowing when I’d get the chance to read it! I’m sure all readers know the struggle of having a too-long tbr, never knowing what to read first.
I was picking up the last 4 books of Game of Thrones that I needed to complete my collection and decided, why not!? And thus, this book came into my possession.
This review is going to be miles better than my previous ones, since I plan on completing it right after I finish it, unlike previous reviews.

A short spoiler free blurb I can give you is as follows, all in my own words!

When the book begins, we are met at an Inn, night time. The Waystone Inn, owned by (unbeknownst to us at the current moment) our main character Kote.
Chapter one begins with a few boys, telling stories and talking of creatures named The Chandrian. At this moment, said creatures will not mean a lot to us until about 30% of the way in. Shortly after there is a knocking, there’s been a demon attack, a man and his horse, only the man lived. This strikes the men as a strange occurance, mostly due to the fact that this certain type of demon always travel in packs, the man that survived claims there was only one demon.

A chapter or so later, we meet a character named at first, The Chronicler, though his true name doesn’t matter a whole lot.
He is thrown into the story at an interesting moment, he’s being robbed, but it is without a doubt the most civil robbery I’ve ever read/witnessed!
The Chronicler is on his way to a nearby city to listen and record a story for a rather famous nobleman. It is his job to record stories, like a reporter of an ancient kind, hense his name, the Chronicler. However on his way, he stops into the Waystone Inn.
Shortly after the arrival of The Chronicler, it is revealed to us that the owner of the Inn known as Kote, is actually a very famous master of the Arcane, young prodigy, known hero and criminal across the land, Kvothe. The Chronicler demands to hear his story, a story that Kvothe never intended to tell. His identity stayed hidden for many years, and he is believed dead by most. As you read on, you will find that Kvothe is quite the cheeky bastard, so of course he agreed under a few conditions, and that is how our story begins.

Kvothe’s story is one of love, hope, death, and destruction, not to mention revenge. It is not one to be missed. Not that I claim to be any kind of authority on the do’s and don’ts of the fantasy genre (though someday I hope to be).
Patrick Rothfuss is also such a genuinely amazing person? He deserves all the credit he has recieved.

The book is well written, to put it lightly.
Me personally, I gave it 4 stars out of 5.
I couldn’t really tell you why it’s not a 5 star read, I suppose I just felt that it was missing something, but do not let my opinion discourage you, I still recommend it in the highest, and I’m running out to buy book two basically right this second, for this series I’m not going to mind the wait!

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A Court of Mist And Fury by Sarah J. Maas

If anyone is a part of the YA Fantasy scene at all, you know about Sarah J. Maas.

She became a serious sensation after she came out of College at Hamilton, New York where she majored in creative writing. In 2010 she emerged with her first book deal with Bloomsbury. Her debut series Throne of Glass was written on FictionPress.com originally. She had started writing the series at age 16, the drafted original name for the series was Queen of Glass. The story was actually based on Cinderella and the premise of, What if Cinderella was not a servant, but an assassin? And instead of going to the ball to meet him, but to kill him?

Then came Sarah’s next series, A Court of Thorns And Roses (that’s a friggin mouthful innit) that was written in 2009, but didn’t hit the shelves until 2015. The book I’m going to review here is the second book in that series!

***  S P O I L E R S   F O R   B O O K   1  ***

★★★★★ / ★★★★★

This book is without a doubt the best piece of young adult literature I’ve ever read. I finished all 626 pages in a weekend, I couldn’t put it down for the life of me (which kinda sucked because I was supposed to be on vacation), but it was time well spent!

I disliked the first book in the trilogy, like, a lot actually. There was a lot of abuse and manipulation going on between the main character, Feyre and the love interest Tamlin who is a Fae king and basically abducted Feyre from her human home, and Feyre is a human child at this time, she’s a young girl no older than 16 or 17. Tamlin and all of the court kingdoms are put under this curse by this witch that lives under the mountain. There was a ball that she threw decades ago which everyone attended, it was a masquerade ball and everyone wore a mask. The curse was placed on all of the court royalty from all the season’s courts (there are so many, I won’t even begin to list them). Feyre’s love interest Tamlin gets captured by this queen along with the court royalty again, and Feyre must go through these trials to save Tamlin & the life of everyone she took, but in order for her to win, she had to earn the favor & assistance of Rhys, another Fae prince (unknown to Feyre at the time) who was kept by the queen of the mountain as her sex slave to be raped over and over. Rhys agrees to help her win, if he can win a favor from Feyre, to be collected at a later date. Feyre reluctantly agrees and the deal is sealed with a tattoo placed upon Feyre’s left arm.

The pace of this book changes drastically in the second book. After Feyre saves Tamlin’s life under the mountain and all of the courts are freed. Feyre and Tamlin have a date they’ve chosen to get married, Feyre has seen Tamlin for the controlling, thankless, spineless ass that he is, and she begs for anyone out there to save her. As you might expect, Rhys comes to the rescue and saves her from being married to him. In short, Rhys and Feyre fall in love and agree to fight the forces of evil together, we meet various other side characters, we learn more about Rhys’ past and Feyre’s two older sisters get very involved in the story as well.

Since this is the book that I’m reviewing, I’m not gonna be super spoilery  even though I totally was for book 1 just now but, maybe I’ll put a spoiler alert for book 1…

But my main point with this book, is that you gotta friggin read it, even if the first book is a flaming garbage can of abuse, triggers and lies. I knew what I was in for with the first book, and a small part of me still enjoyed it, a LOT. So don’t take everything I say here verbatim, if you enjoy the book anyway, hey sure. Nobody should be judged for the type of literature they enjoy. Judge the people that don’t enjoy it at all!

That’s the lesson we can take away from this, KILL THE NON-READERS!

(Image from: https://awayinneverland.blog/2016/05/08/a-court-of-mist-and-fury-by-sarah-j-maas/)

Beetlejuice 30th Anniversary

Hey all, this is going to be another movie post.

So, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, I ain’t no critic. However, I still love the stuff. Three of my favorite programs growing up were Scooby-Doo (the cartoon of course), The Addams Family and of course Beetlejuice. I don’t know if anyone ever watched Scooby-Doo on VHS tape but the commercials always consisted of the three!

I heard it was the 30th anniversary from 2 sources.

#1. Hot topic is having a sale on everything Beetlejuice (and Nightmare Before Christmas actually, for their 25th year anniversary I believe).

#2. There’s a possibility of a sequel happening soon! Of course it’ll be awful, all modern horror/remakes are, but hey, it’s still pretty cool 30 years down the line.

What I know about it so far, or at least what I’ve heard, is that they plan on casting all the original members, the only trailers that exist right now are concepts (unless you’ve seen a legit one, please do send it my way!!), and that I seriously need to get my hands on that Hot Topic limited edition crap.

This is a super limited post I know, I’m more about expressing my excitement about this, but if anyone has anything that they’d like to add to this, that would be seriously awesome. Thanks for tuning in!

 

(image https://bloody-disgusting.com/movie/3491383/new-line-posters-celebrate-30-years-tim-burtons-beetlejuice/)

Rick Riordan Presents: Aru Shah & The End of Time by Roshani Chokshi

Hey guys, coming at you with a review for a book that I didn’t like this time.

When Rick Riordan announced his side project Rick Riordan Presents, I was really excited. I was a big fan of Percy Jackson growing up and I’ve enjoyed a lot of the stuff that Rick has been coming out with lately. I feel that a lot of fans had these same thoughts when they were heading into this novel. Now, before I really get into everything that I didn’t like about it, I should tell you that I finished this book in a matter of 6 hours. Not because it was good, but because it was so bad, I didn’t want to have to come back to it later to finish it. I hate unfinished book business.

So this book got 2 out of 5 for me, the 1 was for the writing because it was still done well, .5 of star was for the idea, and another .5 because I learned something from this book. I love mythology and learning about other cultures through it is always an interesting experience, especially at a time now in our society where Indian culture can be stigmatized and misrepresented.

Now, to get into it. The main reason for my hating this book had heavily to do with the fact that the entire story played out exactly like the Percy Jackson & The Lightning Thief movie. Right down to finding the marbles, the talking half-animal companion, travelling to the underworld to make a deal with the devil, saving Aru’s mom from the supernatural. There were too many similarities for me to genuinely enjoy this, I kept picking things out of it that I hated. It’s very unfortunate considering how highly I anticipated this novel, I mean I was searching for it for days before it even came out, and got it exactly on the release date.

One big problem for me regarding this also had to do with how highly Rick regarded this novel. I mean obviously he has to promote it, it has his name on it. However, he went above and beyond just support for the book (I think he keeps it on his bedside table, like, his bible or something). Which made me think of another serial he had come out with recently named: Magnus Chase And The Gods of Asgard. This. This series I anticipated the crap out of. I love Norse myth, definitely my favorite pantheon. The series though? awful. Complete garbage. The writing was bad, the characters were interesting but I couldn’t get past the amount of potty humor in the book itself, and I found myself wondering how it got to be that way? Rick never wrote like that, his earliest writing is the best he’s ever done, being Percy & The Olympians & The Blood of Olympus series, and I fear he’s spiraling downwards.

I’d love to know how others felt though. This book got a 4+ star rating on Goodreads and I definitely have cause to believe that it’s the fans, wanting desperately for anything to reflect the same stories that changed our childhoods.

Or maybe I’m just getting older.

Horns by Joe Hill

This is a book that I love with all my heart and soul, a 6/5 star rating for sure, what brought this on exactly is the fact that i started Heart Shaped Box a week or so ago and am totally in love with it.

I read this when I was on a trip with my dad this summer. My dad and I really don’t get along that well so I brought as much reading material as I could and this along with Patrick Ness’ The Knife Of Never Letting Go were top priority. Needless to say, I finished both and between those two books, I felt a lot of things.

I reviewed this on Goodreads already (original review:), but I still feel like some stuff was left unsaid, so after going through this book again and highlighting my most favorite parts, I’m going to talk in-depth about how much I love this book.

The back cover of the book reads as follows: Merrin Williams is dead, slaughtered under inexplicable circumstances, leaving her beloved boyfriend Ignatius Perrish as the only suspect. On the anniversary of Merrin’s murder, Ig spends the night drunk and doing awful things. When he wakes up the next morning he has a thunderous hangover . . . and horns growing from his temples. Ig possesses a terrible new power to go with his terrible new look—a macabre gift that he intends to use to find the monster who killed his one true love. Being good and praying for the best got him nowhere. Now it’s time for revenge . . .

Are you intrigued yet? Of course you are. I’ll try to keep this as spoiler free as possible.

Throughout the book, we are introduced to different people that Ig has met throughout his childhood, we get to meet them as kids, and now as adults. Joe is Stephen’s son, so we can of course expect some flashbacks at awful times, and quite a bit of back-and-forth present-past-present going on. Typically I hate that, I started this book twice before I finished it, but as soon as I got far enough in, I was gone. The pain I felt for Ig about Merrin’s death, especially towards the end of the book was so hard. I was really able to relate to the situation towards the end, and Joe’s writing had my heart in a vice-grip ’til the very end.

Now that I’m here, and that I’ve agreed to be spoiler free, there’s actually not a lot I can say for this as far as plot goes, but my favorite concepts from this book I think were all the theological references, and also the Tree House of The Mind. Again, unless you read it, it’s hard to explain but the Tree House of The Mind was a place that Ig and Merrin found wandering through the woods near town, also containing many biblical references itself, the house featured many christian figurines and candles, like an altar. They slept together in the tree house and had to leave abruptly after. They never found the tree house again, however. They searched and searched, even after Merrin had died, Ignatius searched and could never find it. Merrin had called it The Tree House of The Mind because they couldn’t be certain if it had existed physically, they only remembered it in their minds. I think it’s a lovely concept.

I was immensely excited to watch the movie after I got home from my trip! It had been  on my Netflix list for ages and I was waiting until I finished the book, but of course because it’s just my luck, it was gone!

But until I finally do get to see it, I’m probably going to continue reading the book and imagining it as a movie.

Thanks for tuning in!

 

Dante’s Peak — Movie Review

Okay so, obviously what I said in my last post about this being for book reviews was only a partial contradiction, but it is still funny that my first *official* post would be a movie review.

The synopsis according to IMDB goes as follows:

“Volcanologist Harry Dalton (Pierce Brosnan) and Mayor Rachel Wando (Linda Hamilton), finally convince the unbelieving populace that the big one is about to hit and that they need to evacuate immediately, only to discover her two children have gone up the mountain to get their grandmother. With Earth’s clock racing against them, they must rescue the kids and grandma before the volcano explodes in a fury of flame and ash a million times more powerful than an atomic bomb.”

So, where do I begin?

You should know from the start, I’ve loved this movie since childhood and tonight my mom and I decided to re-watch it for the heck of it, she just bought Amazon Prime and she’s checking out the movies and TV shows that they offer through their own media service. So that one comes up, and the 2 things I always remembered were: #1. That dog Lucky is one tough bitch and, #2: The one that scarred my childhood brain permanently was remembering that the grandma in the movie who happens to be Linda Hamilton’s character’s mother in law, at some point in the movie jumps into a lake of acid to make sure that her grand-kids, Pierce Brosnan & Linda Hamilton’s characters make it out of the acid lake alive (which they were travelling over on a tin row boat, basically). Yeah her legs were burnt in colors I just couldn’t un-see.

But after re-watching those scenes again now, I probably love the movie just as much, which is, quite a bit. My favorite scene is still when Lucky comes back, I was worried about her the whole time, mostly because memory can be very unreliable, but either way I screamed. After grandma is laid to rest, the group tries to make their way back to the town of Dante’s Peak, when they encounter a mountain pass which the road itself is covered in molten lava, they try to cross (which obviously is unrealistic) and somehow make it after the truck’s wheels set on fire about 3 times. After the cross, they see Lucky, she’s all burnt and roughed up but she’s moving on her own and I am disgustingly pleased, that’s all I cared about basically the whole movie.

The other thing that is seriously to-die-for in this movie is the scenery, and the special effects are phenomenal as well, for 1997, it’s been a lot worse!

I’m not sure how to end this so I’ll quit while I’m ahead. Prepare yourselves, more crap is coming your way!

Welcome Friends!

Hello all!

Blogging is very new to me still so, here goes nothing.

So, my name is Cassie, Cassandra, whatever you want, call me Egg if you deem fit. As I write this, my first post to you, my blog debut to the world, I am 19 years of age and a soon to be student at a Trade school in my city. I live in Canada, Alberta to be more specific. I grew up in a small and very privileged white town of Sherwood Park, where preteen sex, daddy’s expensive cars and drugs run wild among the youngsters. In among the chaos, there I was, an awkward girl that came from country elementary schools and middle schools with populations below 300. You could say my social skills were, well… Less than adequate. Along the way, high school was a great voyage of change, education (more or less) and of course, relationships. I made friends, enemies, lovers and enemies again. In short, I lost them all, made it out with only a high school diploma to show for it, and that is good enough for me!

So, among my interests that consist of television, movies, history, language, and food, my first love was, and always will be books. The written word. That was the reason for starting this blog, (also, I heard there’s a bit of entitlement to free books through this as well, and who doesn’t like free?).

WordPress would also like me to tell you what you might get out of keeping up with my blog, and obviously if you’ve read this far, my company isn’t too bad. I can’t say you’d get much, aside from a sassy & brutally honest friend! Ha.

Either way, you’re here for the books, and so am I! Perhaps the odd movie review, mostly because I doubt I’ll be able to contain my excitement for the next Spiderman movie, who knows! It’ll be fun for one of us at least.

Thanks for reading! Hope to see you soon.

 

Life can only be understood backwards, but must be lived forwards. — Søren Kierkegaard