After the Snow, by S.D. Crockett

Title: After the Snow

Author: S.D. Crockett

Target Audience: Young Adult

Pages: 308

Rating: 5/10

Genre: Adventure / Sci-fi fantasy

Person: First

Tense: Present

Blurb (quoted):

“Fifteen-year-old Willo was out hunting when the trucks came and took his family away. Left alone in the snow, Willo becomes determined to find and rescue his family, and he knows just who to talk with to learn where they are. He plans to head across the mountains and make Farmer Geraint tell him where his family has gone.

But on the way across the mountain, he finds Mary, a refugee from the city, whose father is lost and who is starving to death. The smart thing to do would be to leave her alone -- he doesn't have enough supplies for two or the time to take care of a girl -- but Willo just can't do it. However, with the world trapped in an ice age, the odds of them surviving on their own are not good. And even if he does manage to keep Mary safe, what about finding his family?”

Judgement:

I’ve got to be honest, although it was readable (if your tried hard enough), I felt like I was going to drop a few levels in English just reading this. It wasn’t bad writing, in fact it’s actually structured well… But the writing style, which I assume was due to the theme/setting of the actual book, was (what first comes to mind) caveman-style; it was illiterate and improper. At first it made me think of a Texas accent (I’m not dissing on them at all, by they tend to skip the beginning or end of words and such) but it’s just beyond that, and it really got on my nerves, though it fits the storyline perfectly because Willo (main character) has been raised in the wild, without school, and it just makes sense – but it’s irritating.

Other than that, the storyline is easy as pie to follow, and it’s good in that it has multiple settings, and you aren’t stuck in the same place throughout the whole story. It takes you on a journey.

I’d suggest this book to guys – I don’t mean to be sexist or anything, but it is certainly not the type of thing I usually read though I’m sure my brother would enjoy it (if he wasn’t so stubborn he refuses to read anything I suggest).

I found the setting, a sort of post ice-age / apocalypse world, interesting to say the least. It’s quite original in my opinion and written well enough to allow the reader to turn it into a movie in their mind (if that is how they read, like me). And I can’t honestly say there was a dull moment – there really wasn’t.

The characters are definitely individuals, there aren’t a bunch of clones filling these pages, and each have distinctive personalities and skills which help propel the story through the different settings.

Personally, not my piece of cake, but overall an acceptable read.

Bleeding Violet, by Dia Reeves

Title: Bleeding Violet

Author: Dia Reeves

Target Audience: Young Adult

Pages: 454

Chapters: 36

Rating: 5/10

Genre: Fantasy / Romance

Person: First

Tense: Past

Blurb (quoted):

“Love… can be a dangerous thing.

Hanna simply wants to be loved. With a head plagued by hallucinations, a medicine cabinet full of pills, and a closet stuffed with frilly violet dresses, Hanna’s tired of being the outcast; the weird girl, the freak. So she runs away to Portero, Texas, in search of a new home.

But Portero is a stranger town than Hanna expects. As she tried to make a place for herself, she discovers dark secrets that would terrify any normal soul. Good thing for Hanna, she’s far from normal. As this crazy girl meets an even crazier town, only two things are certain: Anything can happen and no one is safe.

My Summary:

Hanna is nowhere near what you would term normal. Hallucinations, pills – and purple, everywhere. When she gets sick of her aunt checking her into the mental wards every few weeks, she escapes and makes her way to Portero, Texas, to find her birth mother.

But things aren’t much better here. Her mother doesn’t seem to want her and she’s an outcast in a school of secretive students all in black.

But with a romance brewing as Hanna discovers the town has secrets crazier than her, Hanna may just find she fits in better than she thinks.

Judgement:

Without thinking about it, I would say I enjoyed reading this book – but with a second thought? I really don’t know.

It’s incredibly disturbing in a sense and…. Well, somewhat psychotic – which I suppose is the point of a crazy main character, but it has such a… careless attitude towards murder which doesn’t sit well with society.

Also, it’s quite confusing – towards the end (now I have to try not to give anything away here), it hints that Hanna isn’t crazy at all because one of her hallucinations becomes tangible and affects other people for real…

I’ve read a few other responses to the book and discovered a mass of people gave up before the end out of confusion or irritation. I can totally understand this, but the book still keeps you page-turning.

It was “sort of fun” to read, and kept you page-turning, wondering what was going on or what would come next – but then it also is a scramble of events and ideas. It’s just a mess of scenes and half of them don’t even make sense… I would say there isn’t any structure to this book – maybe that’s the best way to put it.

And then I can’t help but want to say that it was a good read, which just confuses me. I can’t make up my mind about this book to be honest.

In conclusion, if you are a “surface reader” (only interested in words and storyline) you’ll probably enjoy this book, but if your analyse sequence, sense, messages, etc. and really look into it then you might want to steer clear.

I’d say read it yourself and make your own opinion.

Sucker Punch

Title: Sucker Punch

Genre: action / adventure / fantasy

Rating: PG 13

Opinion: 4/10

Running Time:

Directed by: Zack Snyder

Starring: Emily Browning, Vanessa Hudgens, and Abbie Cornish

Blurb (quoted): “A young girl (Baby Doll) is locked away in a mental asylum by her abusive stepfather where she will undergo a lobotomy in five days' time. Faced with unimaginable odds, she retreats to a fantastical world in her imagination where she and four other female inmates at the asylum, plot to escape the facility. The lines between reality and fantasy blur as Baby Doll and her four companions, as well as a mysterious guide, fight to retrieve the five items they need that will allow them to break free from their captors before it's too late...”

My Summary:

‘Baby Doll’ is admitted to a mental institute by her stepfather, but the institute doubles as a sort of Burlesque house (secretly). But there’s more to it than that: when the music starts playing, the dancer retreats into their own mind to a world they envision. Throughout the course of the movie, ‘Baby Doll’ and some of the other prisoners develop a plan to escape.

Review:

I hadn’t heard anything very good about this movie, but no one said it was particularly bad. Mostly people just told me it was confusing. So, I had to watch it for myself.

Sucker Punch is… well, as everyone has said, a little confusing. It’s like a movie within a movie of another movie (if that even makes sense!).

I didn’t exactly enjoy it, but it was watchable… The rest of my family got bored and left though. I personally believe it was created for guys: a bunch of girls wearing skimpy clothes with guns and weapons? Explosions, war, and hot chicks – a guy’s dream, right? Yet not even my brother liked it.

To be honest, I was highly disappointed by this movie; I’d been looking forward to seeing it, and then it just… yeah, you get the idea.

Plus, VAGUE SPOILER, I didn’t understand why some of the characters died. Like, the first one to die was just… sort of pointless. You may or may not know this, but in a movie everything is supposed to mean something but I don’t understand the reason for this death – it’s like the director just though he needed and introduction to start killing the characters or something.

Lastly, I can’t help but feel that at the end it was just a whole heap of scenes/actions and words that were supposed to make it meaningful. Admittedly, the voice over used at the end was kind of important and was thought provoking, but it just dragged on too long and basically said the same thing in several different ways.

However, I will through in that I didn’t entirely get sick of it – it’s a very watchable movie, and I liked how different characters tied in together in different ways (probably would make more sense if you’ve seen it). And I do rather like how it ended: a very unexpected twist that I never saw coming.

I recommend this as a movie to watch when you’re bored with nothing else to do, but it’s not in any way a favourite.