This is exciting! I can now confirm that the expected publication date for the first book in my series, Ice Warriors, is to be this Tuesday – 2nd May.
Here’s the front cover:
And here’s the back cover:
And here’s the full cover, including the spine:
The cover was designed by Rebecca L. Burrows, who can be contacted here: burrowpermaculture@gmail.com
(This review may contain spoilers).
To probably absolutely no one’s surprise… I went to see the midnight showing of Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2. And to be honest, I really enjoyed it. The first one, I liked… but I thought this one was a whole lot better. And by the end, I felt like I’d been put through the wringer emotionally.
The main thing I liked about this movie was the fact that I could see more depth to Nebula’s character. It was really good to see her and Gamorra interacting with each other, but there were also times I felt a whole lot of empathy for her.
Baby Groot was adorable. Seriously. From Rocket’s comments/translations/etc., I gather that what Baby Groot says isn’t necessarily cute, but right from the start of the movie, when he’s dancing around while everyone else is fighting, I was in love.
I also really liked Rocket, though I was considerably less keen on Drax. First-movie Drax, as I recall, I thought was an interesting character. In this movie, he seemed full of contradictions. On the plus side, though, I did like Yondu a lot more in this movie. And considering how much I disliked his character in the Walking Dead, it just goes to show how good an actor he is.
This movie does fall very short of the storyline in the comics. While it was entertaining to watch on its own, there are a huge amount of differences that are noticeable if you’re a fan of the comic books.
I particularly liked Mantis as well, though I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her. I had some mixed feelings about her ‘friendship’ with Drax, as I went off him quite a bit in this movie.
There were some really good visual effects in this movie and it was good to see there were serious moments to offset the elements of humour. This was a movie I thoroughly enjoyed watching and would definitely watch again in the future.
(This review may contain spoilers).
Having watched Power Rangers Dino Charge, I think this might be my favourite of the Power Rangers franchise; though the new movie is quite close to that.
I felt this series did more to explore the characters and the relationships between them and it was good to see them interacting with their families outside of their work as rangers, for instance Chase’s relationship with his younger sister. And it was also good to see that there was an allowance made for them to be able to rush off from their job, since the café was directly connected to the museum and the secret base.
I did like the fact that this series didn’t fall into the trap of most of the previous, with one (or two) Power Rangers having gone rogue and attacking the group, only to then lose their initial over-powered status after becoming the good guy again.
I’d have to say that, out of the Power Rangers in this group, Koda is probably my favourite. While the other rangers do have depth to them (though I didn’t really like the hostility between Kendall and Shelby. It didn’t really seem to have a realistic reason), Koda was not only the one strongest physically… but also emotionally, as indicated by the fact that his friendship bonds were impossible to cut and break.
It was nice to see the origins of how Chase and Koda became rangers, but I would have liked to see a bit more detail about how Kendall got involved in the whole situation, as it wasn’t made very clear how she and Chase met. Or how they met Keeper, even after it was shown how Chase got his Energem.
I did like Ivan and Philip, though it was more that they grew on me. With the way the two of them talked, it was really hard to take either of them seriously. And I would have liked to know a bit more about the country both of them originated from.
There was a lot about this series that followed the same traits as previous series, but I did like who the original first purple ranger was. It was nice to see age wasn’t really a factor in how the Energems chose the rangers to bond with.
Compared to some of the previous series of Power Rangers, I felt the characters came across as more mature and it was nice to see the smaller friendships form within the group. I did enjoy watching this series of Power Rangers and probably would watch it again in the future.
(This review may contain spoilers).
When I initially saw this movie advertised, I was immediately intrigued by the concept, even though I knew it would basically be a slasher movie on a much bigger scale.
I did feel like the trailer gave away a lot of the movie’s events, as it was quite clear from the first voice’s speech that things would escalate.
Considering there were eighty employees (and therefore eighty characters) in the building, it was hard to fully connect to a handful. While it was good to see bits and pieces of some of the characters and their relationships with each other, I felt that, by the time they were locked inside the building, all I was doing was waiting for everyone to die.
It was Mike I felt primarily able to connect to on a moral level, but out of the characters I did get to know, at least a little, I thought Wendall was the one with a moral compass that was completely skewed. I really didn’t like Barry, but I did see that he showed some remorse, even if it wasn’t outright hesitation. As much as I didn’t want to, I could understand where he was coming from.
There were a lot of actors I recognised in this movie and it was interesting to see the way different people handled the crisis. This movie did have an 18 rating and that was definitely deserved.
While I could understand the amount of panic experienced by the people trapped in the building, I did think there were certain things they could have tried that didn’t seem to have occurred to them.
The atmosphere of the movie was very intense and there were moments I was waiting on the edge of my seat to see what would happen. There were some very gruesome and gory scenes in this movie, but I found it an interesting concept with some characters who I did care about… even if the majority of those just seemed to be cannon fodder.
For anyone reading this, I’d like to start a discussion. How do you think you’d react if placed in a similar situation? (You should get a read on the plot just by watching the trailer).
S. Jae-Jones, called JJ, is an artist, an adrenaline junkie, and the author of Wintersong, forthcoming from Thomas Dunne in February 2017.
Maria Alexander is a produced screenwriter, games writer, virtual world designer, award-winning copywriter, fiction writer, and poet. Her stories have appeared in publications such as Chiaroscuro Magazine, Gothic.net and Paradox, as well as acclaimed anthologies with legends such as Clive Barker, David Morrell and Heather Graham.
Her debut novel, Mr. Wicker, won the 2014 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel. Publisher’s Weekly called is, “(a) splendid, bittersweet ode to the ghosts of childhood,” while Library Journal hailed it in a Starred Review as “a horror novel to anticipate.” She’s represented by Alex Slater at Trident Media Group.
When she’s not wielding a katana at her local shinkendo dojo, she’s being outrageously spooky or writing Doctor Who filk. She lives in Los Angeles with two ungrateful cats, a pervasive sense of doom, and a purse called Trog.
Ink of Blood – Review
 | Huilahi on Longlegs |
 | halliehoff on Not Alone |
 | Nancy on Scythe |
 | Roy on Blog Tour: Bluescreen |
 | Dana on Cruel and Unusual |
Ink of Blood 