Inferno

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I literally watched The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons a week or two before we went to see this in somewhat of a "preparation" I guess.

I can't see films out of order even if you don't necessarily need to see the first ones in a series to understand the others.

Although I wasn't that fussed about The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons was only alright, I thoroughly enjoyed this one.

It definitely started off with a bang and was quite dark and strange from the first few scenes.

It did take a little while to get your head around but it does all come together and make sense in the end.

Tom Hanks did another fantastic job as Robert Langdon, a symbology professor at Harvard, who has to decipher the meaning of a clever trail of ancient clues.

Felicity Jones also did a great job accompanying him.

I must say I didn't see the twist coming even though it seemed pretty obvious to Adeel.

Once this twist is revealed the end of the film develops pretty quickly with a very tense and dramatic ending.

I loved the whole concept of combining the elements of Hell, a virus and Dante's paintings together.

I found it way darker than the first two. In fact the imagery Tom Hanks hallucinates/remembers throughout is quite horrific.

The setting was beautiful as well; makes me want to visit Italy all the more!

All in all, I think I preferred this one over the other two.

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Rating:

★★★★☆

Dark Heavens: Book 1, White Tiger

By Kylie Chan.

Image from Goodreads

[A young woman accepts a position as nanny to the young daughter of a handsome, wealthy, and mysterious Chinese businessman only to discover her new employer is really a god and every foul demon in creation is out to destroy him!]

I love Chinese mythology and just learning about the Chinese culture in general was fascinating which is what led me to read this book, along with a recommendation from a colleague at work.

The plot, I enjoyed.

It was action-packed and full of humour, especially between Emma and Leo. But, I did feel that a couple of things happened too quickly, like some bits just came out of nowhere.

And then there's also the dialogue. In some places, it worked (like with the humour), but in other places it felt like a filler and there were a handful of things said that the characters were implying that weren't obvious and never got fully explained.

The characters were great. I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know all of the different levels of Chinese Gods and their "true forms", at least the true forms as they were in this book (I don't know if that's how they're truly perceived). Simone was a cute asset and Mr Chen was a dutiful mysterious father.

I have to say though, the thing that let it down for me was, well, the protagonist, Emma, and the relationship between her and Mr Chen.

Every other sentence they'd repeat stuff like "I know this can never happen" or "we're complete fools for letting it go this far". Blah, blah, blah.

In fact, I'm pretty sure the second half of the book was just filled with these sayings and it got really frustrating.

I also noted that Chan likes to use a handful of specific descriptive words a bit too much, which also got annoying.

It turns out that this is actually part of a trilogy, but I don't even know if I want to read the rest of them if the writing was that repetitive. It wasn't all that enticing with the ending either so I may just leave it as it is.

✌︎