Review: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin by Kevin Eastman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

EPIC. Absolutely epic.

We all know about the four ninja turtles and their master, Splinter. In this tale, set in the future, only one remains. He's on a mission to avenge his family, and he's got nothing but vengeance to live for. It's gonna get wild.

I honestly loved everything about this. I never expected to be as emotionally invested in a comic book as I was in this one. Naturally, with only one turtle left, we need to discover what happened to the others and it is an emotional ride, my friends. One particular image from this series will stick with me a long time.

The artwork just works so well with the story. Story and art really complement each other and the colouring is particularly symbolic. I found it so easy to follow that I was able to really lose myself in the story. This series has officially upped the bar for me with comics.

Absolutely brilliant read, and one I'll be recommending for sure!

View all my reviews

Review: One Hundred Names

One Hundred Names by Cecelia Ahern
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was honestly expecting to skim my way through this one then discard it like a used tissue but I actually kinda loved it?!

Guess sometimes I'm just in the right mood for a chick flick.

The story follows Kitty, a disgraced journalist looking to write the story her recently deceased editor and friend didn't get the chance to write. However, all Kitty has to work with is a list of 100 names.

So the detective work begins, and we start to unravel the stories of six individuals. I think it's a bit cheeky for a story about 100 names to focus on only a handful of them, but I did really enjoy getting to know the Six.

There's a hint of mystery in what links all these seemingly random people, and I did have fun trying to puzzle it out myself, even though I knew it was bound to give us the moral of the story. They were an odd assortment, and they will each tug on your heart for their own reasons.

Kitty's a bit of a mess, but I'm glad she was honest about it. Things don't go well for her at all yet she still seems to be quite a positive sort of person at heart and I think that's a big part of why I liked this story. She's not obnoxious or prying, and while she did frustrate me at the start I did see growth and by the end of the story I quite liked her.

The tale wanders all over Ireland and I was geographically at a loss but also super grateful we didn't have to deal with Irish accents within the writing. Kate Forsyth did it once and I've never forgiven her, and dread reading anything Irish for this exact reason. So thank you, Cecelia Ahern, for writing words properly.

In general, the Feel Good Vibes of this story are high. It's heart warming and lovey-dovey and there are meaningful relationships that aren't just about hooking up but there's plenty of that, too. I'm not a fan of romance in general, but it didn't grate too much til the end for me. So chick lit lovers should lap this one up. It's a comfort read, and will leave you with an appreciation for the stories of strangers.

View all my reviews

Review: What Moves the Dead

What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

If I'm honest, this was a little disappointing.

I'm so captivated by The Fall of the House of Usher: An Edgar Allan Poe Short Story so I've read a few different things related to it now and I have to say this one was underwhelming.

My main problem, I think, was it spent too much of the set up trying to be unique. I enjoyed the story that eventually revealed itself but for the first half of this short book I was kind of bored.

Easton was such a confusing character, and the usage of 'ka' and 'va' etc as pronouns made things unnecessarily complicated. Same with the obscure random history lessons. WHY. I spent most of the novel trying to work out if Easton was man, woman or other. I'm still not sure.

The unsettling atmosphere doesn't really settle in til well over halfway through, despite trying really hard to build creepiness at the start. There are some interesting visual descriptions but they didn't sit easily - they seemed to lack an authenticity that then detracted from the eeriness.

The final tale and its reasoning was pretty cool, though it never really chilled my bones I'm afraid.

Kingfisher is popping up a lot lately as a recommended horror author but this is my first from her and so far I'm not seeing what the fuss is about. Some great descriptions, sure, but ultimately a little over-hyped. Hoping the next one I read has a bit more logic to the storytelling.

View all my reviews

Review: The Last Tale of the Flower Bride

The Last Tale of the Flower Bride by Roshani Chokshi
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A dark, elegant tribute to love and fairy tales.

From the beginning, the writing was flowery and over the top, and yet I loved it. I'm not normally one for words that take the long way round to say what they mean but there was something here that suggested every word had been chosen with great care and it added so much to the whimsy of the story.

This is a tale that transports; one could argue it's a contemporary tale but the mere possibility of magic was enough for me to think of this as a fantasy novel. The atmosphere is charged and all kinds of creatures watch from behind the pages, waiting.

The blurb doesn't give us much: a recently married couple, and she with secrets to hide. Him promising not to look, yet we all know the way things forbidden tend to sink their claws into our minds.

I was completely captivated.

I love fairy tales, myths and legends and this is such a beautiful hybrid of all these things. Our Bridegroom studies the tales, then suddenly finds himself swept up in one. Our Bride is mysterious and magical, and we spend so much of the novel wondering what secrets will be revealed and what will be the consequence.

Beyond the writing there is still a mystery here that needs solving, so even if the language puts you off the intrigue should keep you. A lack of wonder - or appreciation for fantasy and an untethered imagination - may see this a little overdone for you, but for my part I loved disappearing into this magical world of maybes.

This was a really enjoyable, deeply satisfying reading experience, which is a rarity for me. I'm often reading as fast as possible to suck the story from the pages (still its own kind of fun), but here I really enjoyed lingering over the phrasing and the beautiful, whimsical images they invoked.

Highly recommend if you're after a magical tale that takes you to the Otherworld and dares you to discover its secrets.

View all my reviews

Review: Thrill City

Thrill City by Leigh Redhead
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

So happy to be done with this series. Call me old-fashioned, but I much prefer my crime without the generous serving of porn thank you.

The only reason I read this 4th installment is because I got them free. I have some weird affliction that means I can't donate books until I've read them.

So, here we go again with the Porn Star Detective stripper-turned-private-eye. Simone is still reeling from events of the past few books (details which I've happily forgotten) but somehow still finds herself instantly entangled with the accused murderer of a writer. Chaos (and kinky sexual encounters) ensues.

Can you tell that I have no time for this drama queen? There is such an obsession on how she used to be a stripper, she's so good looking she gets bugged constantly, she loves wild sex and loves to talk about how she's out of the stripping game but gosh she REALLY misses it. If only an occasion would arise in which she could put her sexual talents to good use. (Can you hear my eyes rolling)

Meanwhile there's an actual crime of an incredibly brutal nature that's taken place but she's upset because her mum is mad at her??

But the actual mystery was still interesting enough for me to not give up completely. There is a murder, and lots of dramatic scenes between writers, and mostly I just wanted to know what the eff was going on.

There's actually so much going on in this one that it was hard to keep track of. Like, one minute she's investigating all this stuff and the next she's taking a few hours to go shopping? I could not get a grasp on the emotion of this story because it bounced between 'I'm so frightened I might pee myself' and 'weee partying and drinking and sexy sex'. My god. What a mess. I couldn't bring all the threads together and part of my putting up with everything was to get the nice cohesive storyline from the big conclusion.

As additional fuel to my ire, there's an excess of information on what everyone is wearing at all times and I could not give one single crap.

But then, the Melbourne setting is cool because I know these places.

Overall, another disaster which just didn't make a lot of sense to me and is packed with cringey moments. If you're a 'PUSSY POWER!!' kinda feminist you'll probably eat it up (excuse the pun) but this is just not my kinda thing at all. Very happy to be done with this series.

View all my reviews

Review: Wonder Woman, Vol. 1: Afterworlds

Wonder Woman, Vol. 1: Afterworlds by Becky Cloonan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed how this used a different art style for each realm. It made things so much more interesting!

I haven't read the Dark Knights Metal series yet (I seem to work my way backwards for some reason), but this was an easy jumping on point - basically Wonder Woman is supposed to be in Olympia after her death but instead ends up in Asgard, where things seem to be going awry.

For me, it was refreshing to jump into a completely new tale. This takes WW out of the usual Earth so we get a contained story where there's no need to have years worth of cross-overs to keep track of for this to make sense. So as a jumping on point, this worked really well. I am grateful.

As mentioned, I really enjoyed the artwork. Not all the styles were quite to my taste, but overall I enjoyed the way they suited the different worlds. I particularly enjoyed the costume changes. It just seemed like this story would have been a lot of fun to plan out.

The story itself wasn't particularly strong, and I wasn't really convinced by the bad guy. It could have been far more chaotic - I never really felt the threat. That was a little disappointing, as the overall idea was really cool and with the right kind of villain this could really have blown me away.

The pacing was a little off, with long adventures in the worlds becoming a brief appearance by the end. I did really enjoy the first story arc in Asgard, but the rest of the adventures certainly mellowed a lot.

A fun adventure, though the artwork is the real selling point here. Still, a decent place to start if you're a bit of a newbie like me.

View all my reviews

Review: Carve the Mark

Carve the Mark by Veronica Roth
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Not nearly as good as the Divergent series and a little long, but I didn't hate it.

The sci-fi aspect of this was a surprise to me, and mostly confusing. There's talk of different planets and travelling through space to get to different worlds but otherwise this was firmly fantasy. So it was just a bit of a weird mix and for me it just made the world too big. Hard to include excellent world building when you're biting off too many worlds. Anyhoo.

The space setting led to me being kind of confused about the different races and the scope of their homes. The setting is shared between two races at war but it sounded like there was just a meadow between them? Like I said, I was very confused. I can't even explain it properly because I just didn't quite grasp the scope.

The characters were okay, but nothing particularly new. I've seen this pairing multiple times in YA fiction and these two didn't do anything too unpredictable. I enjoyed their relationship to one another, but at the same time I'm definitely getting bored of YA romance tropes.

As far as the story goes, it seemed simple enough to me that this could have been a self-contained book. But where's the money in that, right? So towards the end it just felt like it was being drawn out and added to purely so that there was the potential for more books in the series. I'm curious, but I don't think I'm invested enough to follow through with a sequel.

I did enjoy the concept of the Fated; how those fates can be ambiguous and whether going against them was an option. Plus the writing was easy enough and the story had enough action that I never got bored with it. So it was still decent enough.

I enjoyed it, but it just wasn't anything new enough to be outstanding. It's only fresh angle was the space setting and as mentioned it was just too much for me to properly get a grasp on it.

Not likely to look for a sequel, but this was still an entertaining read with low expectations. Not quite the redeeming story we were looking for, but still not a bad offering.

View all my reviews