Review: Time Crawlers By Varun Sayal

Title: Time Crawlers

Author: Varun Sayal

Genre: Sci-fi Short stories

Publisher: Independently published

Publication date: June 15th 2018

Rating: 2.5/5

Synopsis from Goodreads: 

Alien Invasion, Dark Artificial Intelligence, Time-Travel, High-Tech Mythology, Djinn Folklore, Telekinetics, and life-consuming Cosmic Entities are some major themes in this book which has six tightly-knit, fast-paced Sci-Fi stories.

1. Nark-astra, The Hell Weapon
The weapons he possesses make him the destroyer of worlds, and he burns for revenge. A high-tech take on ancient Indian mythology.

2. Death by Crowd
The dark desires of the masses; darknet websites fueled by a crypto-currency. What lurks in the background – an advanced artificial intelligence?

3. Genie
He rubbed a lamp alright, but what he got was the shock of his life. An entirely sci-fi take on the djinn myth.

4. Time Crawlers
There are individuals who existing in multiple time periods at once, and there are those who know about them….

5. Eclipse
No attacks, no blood-shed, yet there was an invasion and a conquest. Who are these shapeshifter aliens being hounded by an eclipse?

6. The Cave
The fate of an advanced imperial race hangs in balance as a dark celestial entity meets a legendary protector.

Thank you to the author Varun Sayal for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

As the synopsis depicts this is a collection of six sci-fi themed short stories. I generally am not a fan of short stories and short story collections. This is because I am a very character driven person and don’t feel short stories give me enough time to get to know and connect with the characters. This collection was no exception. Just as I started to learn the character names and get a feel for what their personality might be like BAM the story ended and it was time to move onto the next one!

Another thing that bothered me about this collection was the writing style itself. I tried not to think too critically about the writing style as I understand this is a debut collection and self-published, so may not have gone through as big of an editing process. With this being said however there were a number of grammatical errors/ misused words and or extra/ missing words. I also found it hard to determine what age group the author was writing these stories for. I actually personally felt that the writing style changed from story to story some seemed to be written in a middle grade type of way with basic description and wording where as others seemed to be adult fiction with more description, but more thinking required from the reader. For the most part though I felt the writing got better with each story.

As for the stories themselves they were a bit hit and miss for me. Some I found a little boring, confusing and not completely thought through. While others, especially the last few, I found the underling ideas, themes and concepts to be very interesting and unique. I liked how many of the stories had an underling theme of morals and the way they were written made me not only question the morals and actions of the characters but ask myself what I would do in these situations and what my own morals are like. A few of the stories also had some very effective plot twists that I did not always see coming and think could be used to an even bigger effect had the story been a full length novel.

In conclusion I enjoyed the premises of most of the stories and the underlying theme of humanity and morals. Many of the ideas, concepts and technologies had great potential and were unique. However, the inconsistency of the writing style throughout all the stories mixed with my dislike of short stories in general made this collection somewhat hard to read. Therefore, I have given this short story collection 2.5/5 stars. Do you enjoy short stories? Or do you have similar issues with them like me? What are some of your favourite short story collections and or sci-fi reads? Until next time happy watching and reading! 

Movie Review: A quiet place

Movie: A quiet Place

Director: John Krasinski

Studio: Paramount Pictures

Release date:  April 6th 2018

Genre: Drama, horror, suspense

Rating: 5/5

Disclaimer: I endeavour to make this review spoiler free so as not to be a shit person. However as always my version of a spoiler may not be the same as your definition of a spoiler. I will not mention any plot lines, twists, turns or conclusions. This review however will contain a LOT of feelings and my personal honest opinions. All movie posters are owned by the Studio/director.

Just a quick synopsis/ overview. A quiet place is about a family living in a post-apocalyptic / dystopian future. Where any noise they make can cause them to be hunted. The movie follows their story of trying to grow, love and most importantly survive.

Where do I even start with this movie!! OMG I saw this movie a couple of weeks ago now and I still get so worked up every time I think about it. I will start by saying this is probably the best movie I have seen in a long time! If a movie was ever an intense as all hell emotional roller-coaster than this is it. I bet your thinking really? How many emotions can a horror type movie make you feel? Well my friends here’s a not so short list of emotions/ reactions I had during this movie:

• Laughed
• Gasped/ screamed
• Trouble breathing
• Anger
• Sadness
• Crying
• Hands sweating
• Increased heart rate

And that’s not even the extensive descriptive list! Now this makes me sound like an emotional wreck and possibly just someone not cut out for Horror movies. Why some of that may be true. As in I generally hate horror/ scary movies. So much so that I try to avoid them at all costs. This is not your average horror movie. Yes there are a few jump scares but the entire movie does not revolve or rely on this gimmick. The ones they use are all well placed and add to the story. But I would say overall this movie should be classified as a VERY intense/ suspenseful DRAMA!!

Seriously though! For a movie with such few words I was amazed at how much it made me feel and how sucked into it I got. I really have to applaud Emily Blunt, John Krasinski and the other main actors/ actresses for an outstanding job. To be able to convey such emotion and feeling with very little spoken dialogue is absolutely amazing to me.

I think the fact that there was such little spoken dialogue and noise in the movie played a big role in sucking in the audience and making them feel like they too were on the journey with this family. I have never been in such a quiet movie theatre in my life. I personally felt like every little noise was dangerous. That I couldn’t so much as touch my chocolate bar because it would make too much damn noise! If it wasn’t suspenseful enough feeling drawn in like I was part of the family and now damned to a life of needing to be silent. The fact that said family in my opinion made not one but multiple dumb ass stupid decisions took the suspense/intensity dial and turned it all the way up to the bloody max! They had me thinking why? Why??!! No, no! NO!!! You idiots! Despite these stupid decisions this movie managed to convey perfectly what it is like to love your family. What it’s like to put them first and do absolutely anything for them.

I consider everything I have mentioned so far about this movie to be positives. What Tamika? Even though you baled your eyes out and felt like any moment you might not be able to take the intensity anymore? Yes concerned reader even then. Because all of that added up to make one hell of a cinematic experience. I think if I had to find a negative the only one in this movie for me would be the fact that time sometimes seemed to move weirdly or be a bit disjointed. As in something that should take a long time seemed to take a matter of seconds and something that should have been pretty quick seemed to take forever!

Overall this movie was bloody fantastic. I left the movie theatre having felt so many emotions and being taken on such a ride that my hands were shaking uncontrollably. I have never had a reaction like that to a movie before in my life. Although this movie is definitely not for the weak hearted I cannot recommend it enough! Krasinski and Co have done an absolutely fantastic job. If you haven’t seen this movie yet do so like yesterday! I doubt you will regret it. I probably have failed to put into words exactly what this movie did to me and just how good it was but personally I believe it more than deserves of a 5/5 rating! 

Have you seen this movie? What were your thoughts (no spoilers please)? Any similar movies I should know about? Let me know in the comments below. Happy watching and reading. 

 

Book Shelf tour

Hello everyone so today I thought I would do another fun little post instead of a review. I have seen many of these around book blogs, booktube and bookstagram but Michaela from Journey into books is the most recent one I have seen. I thought it was cool to see an insight into her book world and decided to let you all have a little look into mine.

Before I begin apologies for the quality of some of the picture it was a mostly cloudy, & rainy day when I took them. 😦 Great reading weather but unfortunately not great for pictures!

Full room view

This is my book room, library, reading spot and study. I love it and it was a must for me when I finally got my own house.

Shelf 1: Sarah J Maas  

This is one of my favourite shelves in my room. I think it’s so pretty and it hosts possibly my favourite books! It does however annoy me that ACOWAR is not the matching paperback. But I just had to have this edition and one day hope to own them all in both paperback and hardback! As for the TOG series I am yet to read Assassins blade or TOD!  This also features my Uni graduation teddy from my Nana. My favourite Disney princess gifted to me by my fiance and my read and wonder magnetic bookmarks. Just look at my little inner circle and Mia and Tric 🙂

Shelf 2: Casandra Clare & Jay Kristoff

Underneath my Maas shelf is my Cassie Clare and Mr. Kristoff shelf. What’s that? Does the fact that the first three Mortal instruments books aren’t the same size as the others bother you? Yes! Yes it bloody does why do they do this? I will note that I also own the last TMI book as an e-book. This shelf also holds my Nevernight themed candle and lip balm. Bonus content there are actually 3 books on this shelf that I have not got around to reading yet!

Shelf 3: Mead, Shannon & Stiefvater

Next on this bookcase is this shelf. Mead is one of the first authors I ever fell in love with and VA is one of my first loved fandoms. This shelf also contains The Bone Season series, where different length books strike again! 😦  As well as my Raven cycle books. The decor for this shelf is my TOG Dorian and Manon inspired candles and my Nevernight Mia print.

Shelf 4: The Morganville Vampires & Random

The Morganville vampires by Rachel Cain is the longest series I own and contains one of the only signed books I own. As you can also see I have a few books from different series here also that I have mostly read but never continued with for one reason or another. Here I also have a Loki Print ❤ and my TOG Rowan inspired candle.

Printer shelf

As this room doubles as a study my printer is here to. This also features some of my bookmarks and my wind mill collection 🙂

Cube 1

My first cube shelf is mostly a space for the many books surely to come! However currently it holds my Harley print ❤ some science themed decor. And a mixture of random series and standalone books. One of these is another signed one of mine!

Cube 2

My second cube contains most of my newer purchases and or gifted books as well as again some older random parts of series and standalone’s. It also contains most of my contemporary reads.

Shelf 5: Twilight & dystopian/random

Confession time, the Twilight series was what got me into/ addicted to reading. Before these, sixteen year old me hated reading, didn’t understand how people could do it for fun or read something that big! hahaha omg thank goodness I came to my senses!

Shelf 6: Mostly Adult fiction/erotica & some paranormal

Can I just say that I love that this whole shelf nearly consists of books of all the same height. How aesthetically pleasing is that! Also Blood rights is a series I found very interesting and creative but hear very little about!

Shelf 7: Harry Potter & random

Yes my harry Potter series is miss matched, I know but my Nana brought the hardbacks for me back when they were released before I even fell in love with reading hence why one is missing a dust jacket. My amazing Slytherin edition is also there! Decor features yet another Loki print ❤ and a Godsgrave card.

Shelf 8: Random & self-help?

This is probably my least favourite shelf it contains many random books I have been gifted or brought on a whim. Also here is a really cool postcard I picked up and the bookends I have had since I was a baby! And that’s a wrap! 

Do you see any of your favourites? How do you organise your shelves? Have you done a bookcase tour? Let me know below! Much Love,