House of Dark Shadows by Robert Liparulo

When King family move to a small town, 15 year old Xander (short for Alexander) is not happy. But his brother and sister, David, and Toria (short for Victoria) are captivated by the many rooms in the old Victorian fixer-upper they move into.

Soon they find that there is something odd about the house. There see giant footprints in the dust, sounds come from all over the house and when Xander and David walk through a doorway in the second floor, they find themselves in a locker at the local school...

Xander and David discover that there is a portal to far away places and different periods of time. Their father seems to know something about the house but isn't talking. And then the horror happens.

Thus begins the Dreamhouse Kings series.

I don't know why two of the characters have their names shortened to create this unique looking name...well maybe that's the reason.

Liparulo has written three novels I have read, Comes a Horseman, Germ and Deadfall. Like Ted Dekker, this is his first in a series of young adult novels. I must say I enjoyed this novel more than Dekker's young adult series.

House of Dark Shadows is a well thought out story. Liparulo will keep you turning the pages trying to figure out all the mysteries in this house. And because it's a series, you will be in for a thrilling ride.

I cannot wait for book 2, Watcher in the Woods.

5 out of 5 stars here!

Sinner by Ted Dekker

I'll give you what I really didn't like about this book first. I didn't like how my expectations were not met. I've been reading Dekker books since Thr3e first came out and no one was part of his website.

I was expecting Sinner to answer all of my questions that began with The Circle Trilogy. The trilogy causes your brain to twist and turn in on itself so many times and then comes a book called, Showdown. This is a fantastic book. Good versus evil on an ultimate level! But with Showdown, there were questions that followed.

I waited how many months/years for the culmination. And with Sinner I was let down.

With the hype that was building, I was expecting this huge supernatural battle between the villain named Marsuvees Black and the heroes, Billy, Darcy and Johnny. Even in the new covers of the books, Showdown and Saint, they show Johnny and Marsuvees controlling the elements. Nowhere in the book do they use this ability.

Sinner portrays the United States as a place that promotes tolerance. The pinnacle of postmodernism. Congress and the President create a law prohibiting any kind of religious expression in public. Basically making it illegal to say, "Jesus is the only way to God".

The showdown occurs when Johnny brings three thousand Christ followers to a town and they start blogging about Jesus as the only way. The government sends the police and the troops to stop them - by any means.

However, the final battle was not up to par with my expectations. Maybe I'm to blame and should read the book as a story against tolerance at the expense of personal freedoms.

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

This second installment of the Narnia Chronicles is much better than The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe film.

The film begins with the birth of a son. Cousin to Prince Caspian. Caspian must now flee his home or else be killed by his evil uncle. It has to do with heirs and wanting to rule the people.

As he escapes into the woods, he blows a horn. This horn he was instructed to blow whenever he was in serious trouble. It also happens to belong to Susan. The oldest sister. This action by Caspian causes the siblings to transport back to Narnia.

But it's been 1300 years since they've left after the first movie. Narnia has changed. Many of the animals no longer speak and humans now rule the land.

Of course, Caspian and the Pevensie kids team up with a few magical beasts to fight Caspian's uncle and his forces.

I don't want to get too much into because I think you'd want to see it for yourself. It's action packed, a couple battle scenes that take up a large section of run-time along with a couple jump-in-your-seat moments.

I give this movie 4 out of 5 stars. It was almost perfect!

I can't wait for the third film!

Finding Faith: A Search for What is Real by Brian McLaren

I found these two short books in a book warehouse. McClaren writes in a way that is very comfortable. He's not preachy and he explains things in ways that everyone can understand.

His Finding Faith books are written with spiritual seekers in mind.

In A Search for What Is Real, McLaren talks about finding faith by way of emotions. The other volume, A Search for What Makes Sense, deals with intellect. Two ways people argue about faith and McLaren exposes the truth in his signature gentle way.

I've read both Finding Faith books and strongly encourage anyone to read them. You can be someone who already has strong convictions about your faith and these books will challenge you to go deeper.

The Stand by Stephen King

This has been years in the making. I purchased The Stand with the idea of reading a long novel. I'm not a big fan of Stephen King, however I have wanted to read this book ever since watching the mini-series.

A virus or "super flu" spreads across the United States, but there are a few people still alive. The first couple parts of The Stand deal with these survivors dreaming of a woman and a man; both wanting them to join them. And, you guessed it, one's good and one's bad.

These first sections are really boring. King takes forever in creating the characters. And most of the main characters are traveling from the east coast to Colorado without airplanes, so you can imagine the amount of story he can tell.

The story doesn't get interesting until well after the two groups have formed. The good-guys are in Colorado, the bad-guys in Las Vegas.

What more do I need to tell you by way of review? This is a Stephen King novel, there's large amounts of violence, sex and gore. And the length of the story causes, at least for me, one to become so bored with it, you have to put it down for months at a time.

This was my first King read, and it will probably be my last.

Iron Man

What would you do if you were a weapons developer; find out that the weapons you manufacture are used to kill innocents and then learn that you have shrapnel near your heart that could kill you at any moment?

If you are anything like Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) you'd build a mechanical suit and fight to end your own weapons. And, to prevent your death, you'd create this little gizmo based on a new energy source to prevent the shrapnel from entering your heart. It's this energy that powers your suit.

But of course, the bad guys don't want you to succeed, so they'll build a gigantic robot to stop you.

This movie is packed with fabulous actors: Downey, Paltrow, Bridges, Howard, and Paul Bettany as the voice for Stark's butler, Jarvis.

I think this film is better than the Spider-man movies and just up there with Batman Begins. Everything about it is top-notch: acting, writing, chemistry, etc... Some of the best comedic moments are between Tony Stark and his robot assistance as he builds his updated Iron Man suit.

The bottom line for my experience of this movie was creativity. The creativity found in this

movie was astounding. Everything is crisp and great looking.

This is going to join my DVD collection. Can't wait for the sequel!
 

Halo: The Flood by William Dietz

I finished this book with no emotion whatsoever.

Well I take that back. After I told a few people that I was reading these books, I was ridiculed so I should clarify that I did feel some emotion.

William Dietz's attempt at following Fall of Reach receives an "okay" rating from me. I wasn't sure why this book needed to be written. For anyone who doesn't know, this book follows the action from the first Halo game for the Xbox. People who have played the game first will recognize the dialogue taken directly from the game and the scenes played out with more detail.

One big "kudos" that Dietz gets from me is his inclusion of the military stories outside of the Master Chief. When you play the game, you interact with the soldiers sporadically, but in the book, you find out the background and learn their side of the story.

So I guess I could say this is a good book for the Halo curious or just plain crazy fans. It may have been that they tried to treat this as a tie-in book like many publishers do for books based on a movie.

The Flood is not as good as Fall of Reach. But then this guy, Dietz, didn't have much area for creative license.

My library seems to have a problem with their Halo books so I don't know when I'll get to the third book in this series...