The Scorch Trials - a movie review

Okay. I just got back from watching this, and I have to get some thoughts down before I forget. I'll try not to spoil anything, but do keep in mind this is a sequel so I might not make any sense because of that.

I'm re-reading the book at the moment, which is the biggest mistake I could have made concerning this series. I mean, I knew from the trailer that this was going to be a lot different, but I really had a hard time focusing on the movie as its own story because the book is so fresh in my mind. But after I got over that, and the really laughable Finnish translations, this was a lot better.

I'm not going to get into the story that much, just that it's the characters running from baddies. That's basically it. This is the biggest change from the book. To put it very vaguely. I'm not sure how I feel about that just yet.

I loved the music. I liked the cinematography, most of the time. The 'cut-to-blacks' were a little too often to work as a way to keep the suspense up. I adored the acting, well, mostly, but like damn Dylan O'Brien, how do you do that. I liked how badass this movie was, and how action-packed it was. Actually, it was phased really nicely, the quiet -er moments were really well placed. I loved how I laughed and how funny it was, and how I also almost cried a couple of times. I did laugh at some moments that weren't that great, but I'd like to keep this review more on the positive side.

I'm still a little confused if I liked the story. And I will be until I get the dvd and have distanced myself from the book properly. But that's okay. I did like how it had a clear ending and a way to continue the story to the next one, though I think the name 'Scorch Trials' was a little non-fitting. 

I didn't like Brenda. At all. I don't like her in the book, I didn't like her in the movie. I surprisingly liked Teresa more in the movie than I do in the books, I think. And of course I love Newt, Minho and Thomas, in that order. I didn't like the Cranks. (Not gonna elaborate, it'd be spoilers.) I didn't like how Jorge and Brenda were included in the story. I liked Harriet and Sonya, didn't like Aris. I didn't like what Wicked was doing with the kids. I didn't like Ava Page. I actually didn't really like the start of this, but that might be because it was so different from what I had just read a couple of days ago from the book.

I'm being very vague, I'm sorry, but I really don't want to say too much. 

All in all, I'm very confused. At one point I really was thinking I'd come out of the movie saying "I really wanted to like it, but..." but it got better towards the end. And I actually think it was good. I'm going to need to see it again, but yeah, I like what Wes Ball has done with this series, and am kind of getting excited to see what the final movie will be like.

The Historian - a review

Just a heads up, I really did not like this book, and have nothing good to say.

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova is about a young-ish girl who finds a weird book in her father's study and then he starts to tell her the story of how he got it. That's really just the backstory, the main story line is really the father's life, from when he got the strange book to until the story related to that comes to an end. At the same time, there are small snippets of the main girl's -whose name I can't remember- story. And that's the first thing I hated about this book. Also there's Dracula and his history, as that is the thing the father is investigating. (I'm saying this very vaguely to avoid spoilers, though I don't know who would want to read this, but just in case.)

I hated how the story was written; it was mostly in letters. And someone telling a story. Which would have been okay, if there had been a difference in how the letters were written and how the "real" story was told. But there was nothing to differentiate the two, I totally mixed the girl and her father sometimes. And, absolutely no one can write letters from memory many years later like that - I don't even write in my diary in that much detail. It was so unrealistic I wanted to scream.

I didn't like the writing. Can't really tell what it was about it, I just didn't like it at all. Everything was told the long way, the chapters just went on and on and on. A lot of the times there were really long, boring, unnecessary parts from some historical text that was supposed to be relevant. And yeah, I get it, there was information, but I feel like it could have been told in a much more interesting way.  The writing was also really slow to read. And the book was like 700 pages which was like 400 pages too much or something. Could have been okay-ish if it had been shorter.

This book was predictable and cliché, and it tried way too hard to be good and funny and interesting, and ended up being anything but. Everything that could have been interesting was just mentioned once, shortly, and then forgotten. This was just bad. At parts I laughed because it was so bad.

So, I don't recommend this to anybody, not even my worst enemies. Do not waste your time reading this. I only read this because I can't not finish a book, and that was a problem. I could have ended after the first few chapters.

One star. If I could give negative stars, I would. This is possibly the worst book I have ever read, and that's including Fifty Shades of Grey.