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alobearI've been waiting for the next in the Lady Trent series by Marie Brennan to be available in audiobook format for a very long time, since I really like the narrator and decided I would prefer to wait than to order a physical copy. And I'm glad I did, because Within the Sanctuary of Wings was a great listen! It was really fun to go back to Isabella's world of dragons, gender politics, romance and adventure, even if her main discovery in this book was a little hard to swallow. Still, as ever, the characters were all great, there was a lot of emotion and excitement, and it provided a fitting end to Lady Trent's series of memoirs.
This week, I also finished reading Free Food For Millionaires by Min Jin Lee, which follows various members of a New York Korean community through their daily lives in the late 1990s. It's about family traditions and obligations, discovering your true feelings and acting on them, trying to find a stable place in the world, and experiencing different kinds of love. It was a bit depressing in places, and it took me a long time to get used to the universal head-hopping of the POV, but it was engaging and compelling from start to finish, and I'm looking forward to reading more books by this author.
In other types of media, I've been playing Our Personal Space on my new laptop. It's a text-based interactive story, where you play one half of a newlywed couple, who are members of a colony on a garden planet. It's set across 24 months before the next supply shuttle is due from Earth. Each month, you have to decide whether you're going to 'focus on work' or 'take it easy', which of eight different skills you want to improve, and whether you want to spend your free time with your spouse or on your own. Each month then plays out over several scenes in the colony, where you have the opportunity to select from different response in different situations. The situations are partially informed by which of four jobs you select for your character at the start, and also which options you pick from the dashboard at the start of the month. At the end, you get a score out of 75 for the state of your marriage, and a score out of 75 for your community spirit. As all the levels for the different skills have different scenes attached to them, and things play out differently depending on your job role and how well you're interacting with other people, there is a certain amount of playability (and the option to skip scenes you've already seen). However, out of three possible endings, I've so far got the same one twice (despite scoring 75 for relationship in my first play-through and 0 for relationship in my second...), which is a bit disappointing. I do want to try out the other two job role options, max out different skills and also try some different responses to things, so I'll probably play through another couple of times. But it will be annoying if I don't see either of the other possible endings.
UPDATE: On my other two playthroughs, I managed to get top marks on both scores (girly swot, moi?) for the third (happiest) ending, and I also managed to get zero for the relationship and -24(!!!) for community spirit for the first (unhappiest ending), so yay (although being mean and lazy all the way through wasn't a lot of fun)! I've bought the sequel, so I can play through from the guy's point of view, which should be interesting.
Lastly for this mammoth review post, we finally got around to seeing Disney's Jungle Cruise last night, after lots of people have been recommending it to me for ages. And it was - okay. The combination of Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt was a bit draw, and they didn't wholly disappoint, though they were hampered quite badly by a fairly awful script. The film definitely had its moments, and everyone in our party laughed at least a few times, but it certainly wasn't as entertaining as I'd hoped.
This week, I also finished reading Free Food For Millionaires by Min Jin Lee, which follows various members of a New York Korean community through their daily lives in the late 1990s. It's about family traditions and obligations, discovering your true feelings and acting on them, trying to find a stable place in the world, and experiencing different kinds of love. It was a bit depressing in places, and it took me a long time to get used to the universal head-hopping of the POV, but it was engaging and compelling from start to finish, and I'm looking forward to reading more books by this author.
In other types of media, I've been playing Our Personal Space on my new laptop. It's a text-based interactive story, where you play one half of a newlywed couple, who are members of a colony on a garden planet. It's set across 24 months before the next supply shuttle is due from Earth. Each month, you have to decide whether you're going to 'focus on work' or 'take it easy', which of eight different skills you want to improve, and whether you want to spend your free time with your spouse or on your own. Each month then plays out over several scenes in the colony, where you have the opportunity to select from different response in different situations. The situations are partially informed by which of four jobs you select for your character at the start, and also which options you pick from the dashboard at the start of the month. At the end, you get a score out of 75 for the state of your marriage, and a score out of 75 for your community spirit. As all the levels for the different skills have different scenes attached to them, and things play out differently depending on your job role and how well you're interacting with other people, there is a certain amount of playability (and the option to skip scenes you've already seen). However, out of three possible endings, I've so far got the same one twice (despite scoring 75 for relationship in my first play-through and 0 for relationship in my second...), which is a bit disappointing. I do want to try out the other two job role options, max out different skills and also try some different responses to things, so I'll probably play through another couple of times. But it will be annoying if I don't see either of the other possible endings.
UPDATE: On my other two playthroughs, I managed to get top marks on both scores (girly swot, moi?) for the third (happiest) ending, and I also managed to get zero for the relationship and -24(!!!) for community spirit for the first (unhappiest ending), so yay (although being mean and lazy all the way through wasn't a lot of fun)! I've bought the sequel, so I can play through from the guy's point of view, which should be interesting.
Lastly for this mammoth review post, we finally got around to seeing Disney's Jungle Cruise last night, after lots of people have been recommending it to me for ages. And it was - okay. The combination of Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt was a bit draw, and they didn't wholly disappoint, though they were hampered quite badly by a fairly awful script. The film definitely had its moments, and everyone in our party laughed at least a few times, but it certainly wasn't as entertaining as I'd hoped.
