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alobearThe Desert Spear is the second in the Painted Man series by Peter V Brett. I listened to the first on in audio format a while ago, and decided to give the second one a try. It's interesting to begin with, because it takes a character who is essentially the bad guy and tells his whole back story before rejoining the heroes from the first book and following their story further. Having that depth of insight into the antagonist makes everything that much more ambiguous, and also makes his eventual direct contact with the heroes much more layered and intriguing. It was a bold move, but very effective. Unfortunately, a different aspect of the book really started putting me off by the end - the treatment and presentation of women. I won't go into details but there's one particular female character who suffers a lot of abuse during the book, and her reaction to it just didn't ring true. The narrator is a bit overly melodramatic in his tone of voice, too, which got a bit wearing in places.
On Friday night, I went to the cinema to see The Hunger Games film. After reading the book, and enjoying it to a certain extent, I really just wanted to see how they could make a film of it that got a 12A rating. To my surprise, it turned out to be excellent, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. There were obviously some changes from the book, but mostly I thought they were improvements, and the film also contained something I felt was very lacking in the book - the wider perspective. The book is entirely from Katniss' point of view, so you only get to see, hear and know what she does. The film, on the other hand, had much greater scope, and was much more affecting because of it - the scenes of the gamesmakers manipulating the arena were very chilling, there was fantastic political intrigue between the President and the head Gamesmaker (whose beard was awesome), the presentation of the games from the outside (with the commentators and audience reactions) made it that much more horrifying, and the views of the reactions in the outer districts added extra pathos. The casting was superb (especially Stanley Tucci and, of course, Jennifer Lawrence), the pacing was good, and it had oodles of depth to it. The only drawback for me was the shaky camera style in the action sequences (understandably used to blur the violence), which always makes me feel seasick, but it didn't detract too much from what was a really good film. I'd actually quite like to see it again!
On Friday night, I went to the cinema to see The Hunger Games film. After reading the book, and enjoying it to a certain extent, I really just wanted to see how they could make a film of it that got a 12A rating. To my surprise, it turned out to be excellent, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. There were obviously some changes from the book, but mostly I thought they were improvements, and the film also contained something I felt was very lacking in the book - the wider perspective. The book is entirely from Katniss' point of view, so you only get to see, hear and know what she does. The film, on the other hand, had much greater scope, and was much more affecting because of it - the scenes of the gamesmakers manipulating the arena were very chilling, there was fantastic political intrigue between the President and the head Gamesmaker (whose beard was awesome), the presentation of the games from the outside (with the commentators and audience reactions) made it that much more horrifying, and the views of the reactions in the outer districts added extra pathos. The casting was superb (especially Stanley Tucci and, of course, Jennifer Lawrence), the pacing was good, and it had oodles of depth to it. The only drawback for me was the shaky camera style in the action sequences (understandably used to blur the violence), which always makes me feel seasick, but it didn't detract too much from what was a really good film. I'd actually quite like to see it again!
