jacey | Jan. 14th, 2020

Jan. 14th, 2020

Following on from The Thirteenth Witch, this is the second King's Watch book featuring featuring Ex RAF helicopter pilot Conrad Clarke who is beginning to get his head around Magick, but hasn't yet joined the King's Watch. Despite completing the task set for him in the last book, Conrad has to undertake several more tests helped by Vicky who is fast becoming his partner. She has more magick than Conrad and is trying to teach him what he needs when he needs it.

This is not as fast paced as the previous book and, indeed, rather more of the book is taken up with Conrad's tests and not the dragon problem promised by the title, which dragged a bit for me untiil they got to the dragons. Then it woke up and gave me a fast, danger-packed story.

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<select ... ><option ... >Afrikaans</option><option ... >Albanian</option><option ... >Amharic</option><option ... >Arabic</option><option ... >Armenian</option><option ... >Azerbaijani</option><option ... >Basque</option><option ... >Belarusian</option><option ... >Bengali</option><option ... >Bosnian</option><option ... >Bulgarian</option><option ... >Catalan</option><option ... >Cebuano</option><option ... >Chichewa</option><option ... >Chinese (Simplified)</option><option ... >Chinese (Traditional)</option><option ... >Corsican</option><option ... >Croatian</option><option ... >Czech</option><option ... >Danish</option><option ... >Dutch</option><option ... >English</option><option ... >Esperanto</option><option ... >Estonian</option><option ... >Filipino</option><option ... >Finnish</option><option ... >French</option><option ... >Frisian</option><option ... >Galician</option><option ... >Georgian</option><option ... >German</option><option ... >Greek</option><option ... >Gujarati</option><option ... >Haitian Creole</option><option ... >Hausa</option><option ... >Hawaiian</option><option ... >Hebrew</option><option ... >Hindi</option><option ... >Hmong</option><option ... >Hungarian</option><option ... >Icelandic</option><option ... >Igbo</option><option ... >Indonesian</option><option ... >Irish</option><option ... >Italian</option><option ... >Japanese</option><option ... >Javanese</option><option ... >Kannada</option><option ... >Kazakh</option><option ... >Khmer</option><option ... >Korean</option><option ... >Kurdish</option><option ... >Kyrgyz</option><option ... >Lao</option><option ... >Latin</option><option ... >Latvian</option><option ... >Lithuanian</option><option ... >Luxembourgish</option><option ... >Macedonian</option><option ... >Malagasy</option><option ... >Malay</option><option ... >Malayalam</option><option ... >Maltese</option><option ... >Maori</option><option ... >Marathi</option><option ... >Mongolian</option><option ... >Myanmar (Burmese)</option><option ... >Nepali</option><option ... >Norwegian</option><option ... >Pashto</option><option ... >Persian</option><option ... >Polish</option><option ... >Portuguese</option><option ... >Punjabi</option><option ... >Romanian</option><option ... >Russian</option><option ... >Samoan</option><option ... >Scots Gaelic</option><option ... >Serbian</option><option ... >Sesotho</option><option ... >Shona</option><option ... >Sindhi</option><option ... >Sinhala</option><option ... >Slovak</option><option ... >Slovenian</option><option ... >Somali</option><option ... >Spanish</option><option ... >Sundanese</option><option ... >Swahili</option><option ... >Swedish</option><option ... >Tajik</option><option ... >Tamil</option><option ... >Telugu</option><option ... >Thai</option><option ... >Turkish</option><option ... >Ukrainian</option><option ... >Urdu</option><option ... >Uzbek</option><option ... >Vietnamese</option><option ... >Welsh</option><option ... >Xhosa</option><option ... >Yiddish</option><option ... >Yoruba</option><option ... >Zulu</option></select>

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The timing was wrong before Christmas, so although this is a 2019 movie, for me it's my first of 2020. There have been plenty of reviews already, some favourable, some not. This pretty well delivered what I expected with Rey, Poe and Finn stepping up to lead the resistance, and continuing their fight against the Sith and the new Supreme Leader, Kylo Ren. But Kylo Ren isn't the only bad guy around and Rey learns something she'd rather not know.

There's a lot of action and a redemption and a mega space battle, which is pretty much as expected.

They made good use of older footage to keep Leia in the picture (literally) and I think it was done sensitively. I would have liked to see more of Kelly Marie Tran who played Rose. Her character is pretty much sidelined in this after her involvement in the action of the last instalment.

I admit to being totally underwhelmend by Adam Driver in all of the last three movies, though I know many of you will differ. He's a good actor, but simply doesn't look like he could be the offspring of Han and Leia.

There were plenty of easter eggs for old fans (and yes I did see Episode IV when it first came out). Having Billy Dee Williams as Lando Calrissian was lovely, but I was unreasonably pleased to get a flash of Dennis Lawson as a suitably aged Wedge Antilles in the final battle - a survivor if ever there was one. And, of course, we got a ghostly repriose from Luke and Han, and a fitting end for Leia.

If you've seen all the others, good and bad, you certainly won't want to miss this.

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I don't know why so many people took against this so thoroughly. It's pretty much what I expected from the trailer. The music is well done and the dancing is superb. As for the story, well, there really isn't much of one. Just like the stage show it's a loose excuse to sling together some song and dance numbers based on Andrew Lloyd Webber's aettings of poems from T.S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats.

Francesca Hayward, a Principal Ballerina at The Royal Ballet, is the lead female dancer, but the whole company is excellent. I particularly liked Robbie Fairchild's Munkustrap. Special mention for Judi Dench who steals every scene she's in as Old Deuteronomy, and Jennider Hudson as Grizabella.

The costuming is clever, and the only slightly weird thing was that the setting seemed disproportionatrely large (or the cats seemed disproportionately small).

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It's years since I read the book, so apart from a few memories about Jo being a writer and Laurie being the boy next door, I'd forgotten most of the storyline of Little Women, which is a pity because this version hops timelines which makes the linear story somewhat confusing. I ended up checking to see if Jo's hair was short or long to find out where we were in the story, which was a distraction.

The performances are excellent. Saoirse Ronan is the stubborn and determined Jo; Emma Watson, her home-loving older sister, Meg. Florence Pugh is the somewhat selfish, Amy (No I would never have forgiven her if she'd burnt the one and only handwritten copy of my manuscript!) and Eliza Scanlen the doomed Beth. I didn't expect to like Timothee Chalamet as Laurie, but he won me over. Meryl Streep's solid performance as Aunt March is note-perfect.

One thing that always upset me in the book is that Jo ends up with and elderly, stuffy professor, but Louis Garrel sets this to rights, or maybe it's just that I'm now old enough to appreciate professors! Laura Dern makes an excellent Marmee March. I couldn't figure out where I'd last seen her face on the screen until I looked her up on IMDB - and of course it was Admiral Holdo in Star Wars VIII.

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Jacey Bedford

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Booklog 3/2020: Mark Hayden: The 12 Dragons of Albion - King's Watch #2
Movies 2020/01: Star Wars IX; The Rise of Skywalker
Movies 2020/02: Cats
Movies 2020/03: Little Women

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Jacey Bedford's Journal

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Jan. 14th, 2020

Jan. 14th, 2020

Booklog 3/2020: Mark Hayden: The 12 Dragons of Albion - King's Watch #2

Movies 2020/01: Star Wars IX; The Rise of Skywalker

Movies 2020/02: Cats

Movies 2020/03: Little Women

Profile

January 2026

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