Chuckles Mini Reviews Catchup

I review everything I read, on my blog and on Goodreads. Most reviews are of a decent length but sometimes you don't have much to say about the book because of its length or you DNFed it or various other reasons. In cases like that it makes sense to write a few mini reviews in one post and clear them out your way! So lets catch up with some reviews from June!

1) Lady Colin Campbell-Diana In Private 
An inside look at Princess Diana provides a detailed account of her private life, from her birth, to her 1979 wedding to Prince Charles, to the problems that have troubled her marriage. 

I very much enjoy the work of this author, who has used her contacts and position in Royal circles to interview many people who knew both Charles and Diana, as well as the Royal Family and the Spencers. She looks at Charles and the string of girlfriends he had, looking at their suitability as possible Royal brides and why each relationship ended. The author looks at each of the problems in the relationship and gives reason for what caused them. She is critical of Diana's behaviour towards Charles but I did like that she gave valid reasons for why Diana was behaving the way she did ie lessons learned in her chaotic upbringing, her parents divorce, her need for approval and the dreadful side effects of the bulimia. There is no doubt that Diana had mental health issues and her insecurity and paranoia certainly started to destroy her marriage. It gave me sympathy for both Charles and Diana, who never had much hope of staying together once the children were born.

The author looks at the chaotic upbringing of Diana and her siblings, the divorce of her parents and how she was in a family that lacked discipline and standards of behaviour. This led to a sense that Diana was always able to get what she wanted if she played up so it is not surprising that she tried this tactic to get her way with Charles, something he hated. The book reveals that Diana was pretending to love all the things Charles did so that she could hook Charles as a husband so you can imagine his shock after the wedding to discover they really had nothing in common and that she was no longer willing play the eager young woman who follows all the rules. It led to chaos in her marriage and with Royal protocol. I really felt for Charles as he ended up with a bride totally different from the fiancee he adored. Diana couldn't accept that she was not going to be able to change a man set in his ways and the conflict ripped them apart. It was a really great book that delved into the marriage and showed all the issues. I recommend it to those interested in the Royal Family.

Read June 2019
4 stars.

2) Paul Mannering-Eat
After a collision with floating debris ends their sailing adventure to Japan, a group of friends struggle to survive in the vast blue desert of the South Pacific. They hope an abandoned ship could be the rescue they so desperately need. On-board they are plunged into a terrifying nightmare of venomous monsters, mutant rats, and crazed cannibals. When man is the easiest prey, you have to eat to survive. 

After a group of people on a sailing trip have to go into the life raft, they hope to drift into a shipping lane and be resued before their supplies run out. As tensions run high within the group, an abandoned drifting ship seems the perfect escape-until they discover what is lurking below decks. After trying to evade the deadly sharks around the raft, they have to deal with mutated animals and deadly cannibals.

This book's lesson seems to be 'remember less is more'. There were way too many elements going on and I felt that none of them were done well. I liked the start of the story with the obnoxious people on the life raft and the fear of the sharks around them but it all went downhill for me as soon as they got onto the ship. The cannibals are the former crew and passengers who have had to turn to cannibalism to survive but instead of Hills Have Eyes type cannibals, they have become religious zealots who do weird ceremonies with mutant animals. It is all focused on these zealots rather than the scary animals which only appear each time the heroes are being chased. And that is the problem with the book. It is so repetitive. The MCs are trapped or caught by the cannibals, they escape, get hunted, get caught, escape, and so on. We get glimpses of big snakes and other nasties but not as prominent in the story as I hoped we'd get.

The characters were all dreadful and I didn't care much what happened to any of them. Keith and Elizabeth are obnoxious idiots who deserved anything coming to them. Lily was a complete weirdo whose behaviour was strange even before the disaster and it becomes clear that she is a psycho. Logan is another strange fish who seemed to be making jokes at the worst possible times and being a moron. Dale wasn't greatly exciting but Shona was about the best of them. I didn't much care for the religious demented cannibal story and wanted more of a creature feature which I didn't get. I was pretty disappointed overall with the repetition, the plot and the way it was written.

Read June 2019
2 stars.

3) Jason Rubis-Terror Birds
When college student Alex Drummond takes a summer job as research assistant to eccentric cryptozoologist Thaddeus Bruckner, he’s not sure what to expect. He certainly doesn’t foresee babysitting the egg of a Titanis walleri, the massive avian predator that once ruled southern Texas. But after Dr. Bruckner’s experiments in “wormhole dilation” work a little too well, that’s exactly the role he’s stuck with. And when the newly-hatched Titanis is abducted, things get even wilder, as its vengeful parents tear through a wormhole to wreak havoc in the Lone Star State. Bruckner and Alex are forced to play monster wranglers in a desperate effort to get the rampaging Terror Birds back to the Pliocene and avert catastrophe!

Alex thinks getting the research job for his hero will be a good thing but ends up in disaster as a prehistoric bird with a dinosaur egg breaks through a wormhole constructed in the Professor's back garden. I liked the idea of the wormhole letting a dinosaur or two into the modern world. I liked the story of the mother bird getting mad about all the egg thieves. I hoped that this would be a semi amusing creature feature but it was totally ruined by the idiot characters.

The Professor is a bit of a typical eccentric scientist, full of his own genius but paranoid that his inventions are going to be stolen by rivals or he will be mocked by other scientists. I could at least deal with his character compared to his assistant. Alex is a useless, spineless, pointless idiot who seems to lack intelligence, common sense and the ability to function as a human being. He has to keep quiet about the egg they are trying to hatch but as soon as he is questioned on the phone about buying incubation gear, he spills his guts, his name and who wants it. When Camila comes to the house he just lets her march in and answers her questions and lets her take photos and leave! He is a total muppet. Camila is a bitch who bullies Alex for fun on the phone and is basically an annoying, interfering harpy. Her boyfriend is a wannabe gangster who is organising party events, this time for rich spoiled teenage perverts. Ugh. I just hated all of them. The story might have been decent with better characters. I'd have been rooting for the birds though! To be honest I lost interest in this quickly and DNFed it.

Read June 2019
DNF 2 stars. 

4) M Van-Ash
Facing the zombie apocalypse in a wheelchair might prove a challenge to others. For thirteen-year-old Ash it's just another fight for her life. When feeling deserted and alone with the knowledge that your days are pretty much numbered, you might decide not to be pushed around anymore. But stuck in a wheelchair with the risen dead on your tail—this might prove a challenge. Ash’s stay at a hospital that for all intents might be her last, turns into a different nightmare when a killer virus overcomes the staff and her fellow patients. With the walking dead roaming the hospital halls, Ash has to depend on the help of an old man, and a soldier who could turn out to be the enemy to survive. She not only has to use her head, avoiding zombies, but also to stay out of the hands of a shady government agency that wants to dissect her. 

Ash has been paralysed by an operation gone wrong, abandoned by her family who only had her to try and save their beloved daughter from a genetic disease-and now Ash is dying from that cancer too. Stuck in a hospital ward ran by a bitchy nurse, she turns to a dying old man for company. When they hear about the pandemic and riots outside, they are surprised not to be evacuated like the rest of the city. Instead they are to be used for scientific research to stop the zombie virus. Ash and Chuck are about to try their escape when the hospital is overrun by the zombies, and the soldiers who are there to extract the cancer patients. 

I liked this one because it was different. We have two heroes, both with cancer, one hooked up to bottled oxygen and unable to walk far, and the other in a wheelchair. It was nice to see this diversity in a zombie book, something I am always longing to see. I loved Chuck's character the best as I enjoy seeing older characters as my heroes. We don't see enough of that. I also liked Angie and Jonesy, who have the job of rounding up these patients to be experimented on, but who do start to see them as people needing protected. There were a few nice twists in the relationships between the four of them as they make their way through the hospital, avoiding zombies and soldiers. I enjoyed the hospital as a location because buildings like this are perfect for the zombie apocalypse when the reader is unsure what lurks around every corner. I liked the characters in general though Ash was a bit of a cow to start with, expecting people to do things for her but never being grateful and being as difficult as she could. However it wasn't enough to make me hate her or anything.

An enjoyable short zombie book with diversity, a solid plot and good characters. I might read on with the series at some point.

Read July 2019
3.5 stars.