The Hunger Games trilogy, Jaggy Splinters, Mortal Engines, Zootopia, Inside Out and Dear Esther

[lathany]

During my holiday in the US, I managed a fair amount of reading and re-reading. The things I read for the first time were three short stories and five books.

The short stories were all pieces by authors I knew and were little additions to series. They were Penric's Demon by Lois McMasters Bujold (a Chalion demon story), Lockwood & Co: The Dagger in the Desk by Jonathan Stroud and The Last Day of Christmas by Chris Brookmyre (Jack Parblane). All were good, but in my opinion less good than the full-length novels of the same series.

The full-length books were:

• The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins. Technically three books rather than one, but I see no need to separate them. I've seen three of the four films, so only the last half of the third book was new. I quite enjoyed them, but felt I liked the Divergent trilogy better (which is a bit unfair as it came second, I think). This just gets much too dark and distressing, although I liked the ending slightly better than that for Divergent.
• Jaggy Splinters by Chris Brookmyre. This is actually a collection of short stories, two Parblane, one Simon and three others (one is not technically a story). I thought these were OK and they completed my Brookmyre collection, but that was about it.
• Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve. This is the first of a series, but works perfectly well as a standalone. I liked the concept and I thought it was quite good, but there was rather too much switching between characters and I found it difficult to care about some of the ones I was supposed to care about. That said, Reeve can write endings, which is something I feel many authors struggle with.

I saw two films this month, both animated, one in the States and one back at home.

• Zootopia - we saw this at Nina's. I thought it was enjoyable with a decent plot, nice voice acting and it was generally good to watch.
• Inside Out - this was Kermode's film of last year and I can see why. Lovely concept, it really felt that you were inside a child's head, and generally about the right length.

On Thursday, chrestomancy and I played Dear Esther. It's entirely a walk-through of scenes with voice-over and music. It is not really a game, but instead is somewhere between setting a mood and talking about the past (screenshot below). There isn't really a plot or even much of a story, but it was interesting to see. Although, sadly, it gave me terrible motion sickness.



Finally, I had something of a surprise when I returned home from holiday - I've lost weight. Not a great deal, but knowing that I put on weight last time I went to the States, it was a bit of a shock!