Thursday, 27 March 2014

The Iron Trial Cover + Excerpt

Cassandra Clare, the author of The Mortal Instruments, and Holly Black, most known for the Spiderwick Chronicles, have teamed up to write a new book series titled The Magisterium. 
I'm not sure who the artist for the cover is, but they did an amazing job!

The series follows a boy named Callum Hunt as he and other students study at Magisterium, an academy for magic. There will be five books in the series, each one taking place a year apart in Call's life. The Iron Trial is the first book in the series.

From the prologue, this book seems very promising and I can't wait to read the rest. The series is aimed at middle readers - the same category as Percy Jackson.  The Iron Trial will be available in the US the 9th of September.

You can read an excerpt from the book here.

Wednesday, 26 March 2014

Sun Damage + Giveaway

Would you look at that cover? It's absolutely gorgeous! Sun Damage is the third book in the Sunshine series by the wonderful Nikki Rae, following Sunshine and Sun Poisoned. 

Life wasn't what Sophie was expecting, so why should death be any different? She’s come back from swimming between the two, and every problem she left is still there. And then some. There’s the human world, where she has a brother on the verge of ruins, band mates all set to go on tour, and people she thought she wouldn't be seeing for a long time showing up. Then there’s her new world, where she’s seeing and hearing things that should not be heard or seen. Where Myles knows more about her than she could have ever guessed. She still doesn't know exactly why Michael is tormenting her, but somehow, everything is connected. The monsters are closing in on all sides and the question is, will Sophie be able to defeat them before it all ends?

Sun Damage will be released on the 28th, available on both Barnes and Noble and Amazon.

Find more about the book and the author:


a Rafflecopter giveaway

Tuesday, 25 March 2014

Logan Lerman is leaving Percy Jackson?

I know I'm posting more news than I am reviews, and I'm so sorry for that, but so much has been happening lately! And a lot of that stuff is in the Percy Jackson fandom.

According to MTV, Logan Lerman is leaving the Percy Jackson franchise to further his career. On the other hand, this does come from MTV and the quotes seem to be taken slightly out of context. I do hope that the future movies do come out, even if Logan is replaced by a new actor for Percy. I don't exactly believe every word is written (especially if I don't hear it straight from the actor themself with no censoring).

The full MTV article is here, if you want to read it for yourself.

Divergent Movie Review

Last Friday, the film adaptation of the novel Divergent by Veronica Roth was released in cinemas in the states. It was directed by Neil Burger, who is also known for The Illusionist and Limitless.

According to Rotten Tomatoes, the average critic rating is at 40% who thought it was good. I’m actually rather surprised at how low that rating is, though I can’t say that I generally trust the website for if films are good or not.

In my opinion, coming from the perspective of the book, this movie is one of the best adaptations of a book to date. Granted, I haven’t read the book in over a year, but it was pretty damn good. It follows the plot shockingly close (we all remember the Percy Jackson flop), which I haven’t seen since Harry Potter.

I’m not going to lie, there were some changes from the book. It wasn’t a carbon copy. The main difference from what I could tell was that Uriah, Marlene, and Zeke were all cut out from the film. I know that the fandom was in an uproar when this was found out, and I’m not exactly trying to defend the movie here, but speaking from personal experience I found it was difficult to keep track of the characters in the book. It would be just as difficult if not even more so to keep them straight in a movie. So in that sense, I understand the change. There is also the fact that the ending was tweaked slightly to include the fight scene and some of Tris’s fear landscapes were absent. Also, small detail, but the Erudite weren’t wearing glasses. I honestly don’t know why I remember that.

The biggest problem I had with this movie was the use of green screens. They were used multiple times in the movie and those scenes felt a little too 2005ish for my tastes (and does anyone else remember Alex Rider?).

There was a lot of hype about the lead actors – and by hype, I mean hate. Shailene Woodley and Theo James, playing Tris Prior and Four respectively, had a lot of the fandom up in an angry uproar. Shailene didn’t look “Tris” enough for the part. Theo wasn’t hot. And granted, from the stills, that seemed to be the case. But when I actually saw them in action, I was in for a shock. Their acting was perfectly spot on for the characters. Tris was timid with that adventurousness and curiosity about her. Four started off cruel and cold, only to warm up to Tris. It really was a good job on their part, and on the part of the casting crew (Venus Kanani and Mary Vernieu).

Coming from my friend, who hadn’t read the books, the movie held good entertainment value. I obviously couldn’t weigh in on this because I was so focused on similar it was to the novel. In her view, though, the film was on the long side and dragged on in places. The two hours passed without me noticing, though without already knowing the plot beforehand, I would have probably gotten a bit bored.


Overall, I would give this movie a 5 out of 5. Granted, there were imperfections, but there literally isn’t a single movie without them. I have not had this much pride in a film adaptation ever in my life. From the casting to the accuracy to the book, it was obvious that the screenplay writers and the director had actually read the book (something that is very questionable in other movies). So kudos to this movie for being one of the best of its kind (dare I say it was even better at accuracy and entertainment than Catching Fire).

Monday, 24 March 2014

NEW PAPER TOWNS MOVIE


If you haven't heard of John Green by now, you've probably been living in a hole that has no wifi. The acclaimed author of The Fault in Our Stars (which has a film coming out the 6th of June - review of the book here) just announced on Twitter that his 2008 novel Paper Towns will be made into a movie!
Paper Towns has to be my favourite book by John Green. You can read a review of it here. The film will be starring Nat Wolff as Quentin Jacobsen and John Green will, in fact, be the Executive Producer.

Friday, 21 March 2014

The Mortality Doctrine: The Rule of Thoughts Cover Reveal

If you've been following my blog from the beginning, then you should know that one of my favourite books is The Eye of Minds by James Dashner (also know for the Maze Runner, which currently is being made into a film. Trailer here). The second book in The Mortality Doctrine finally has a cover!
I do rather like this cover. It doesn't give away too much about what may or may not happen in this book, but it is rather interesting. The contrast between the warm and cool colours do well to juxtapose the difference between the digital world and the real one (though in this series, the difference between the two is a blurred line). The art itself is brilliant, credit going to Stephanie Moss (At least, I think so. She did the cover for the first book). I can't wait until this book is released!

What's your opinion on the cover? What are you looking forward to most in this book?

Monday, 17 March 2014

THE MAZE RUNNER TRAILER

Finally, after the movie being pushed back months, we have gotten our trailer!

The Maze Runner by James Dashner is the first book in self-titled trilogy. I highly recommend all you cranks to go read it as soon as possible. From what I can tell from this trailer, the movie is going to be highly accurate to the book - an absolute first for a YA book-to-film adaptation in a long while (not naming any names but, erm, *cough* Percy Jackson *cough*). Not to mention the insanely hot Dylan O'Brian, who plays as Stiles in the MTV show Teen Wolf, has the lead role of Thomas. I honestly cannot wait for this film to come out!

The Maze Runner will be released in cinemas in the US on 19th September.