Skip to main content

Click "Archive" or "Labels" in the sidebar to browse reviews, or use the search bar to look for a specific title.


Review: The Isle of the Lost

The Isle of the Lost The Isle of the Lost by Melissa de la Cruz
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read this to commemorate the movie The Decedents that's coming out... soon. No idea when, to be honest. Edit: It came out July 31st. I have some links to trailers and bonus features at the bottom of my review.

The Isle of the Lost is about... wait for it... the villains who live on the Isle of the Lost. Spoooky, except no. These villains are all from a myriad of Disney movies. Its about their lives on the island which they were all banished to at one point. Well, it's actually about their kids, mostly. The clear purpose of this series is to bestow nostalgia upon the older generation and hook the new generation. Even though I grew up with all these stories and characters and have all the VHS tapes gathering dust in my basement, I personally felt zero nostalgia.

I enjoyed it, though there was a lot wrong with it. Something that was very prevalent throughout the whole book were the editing errors. So. Many. Editing errors. Everywhere I looked there was another one. I don't think I've ever read a (non-self published) book that has this many editing errors before. Though I shouldn't be too surprised, because Disney Hyperion also published the Percy Jackson books and they too had editing errors here and there. Not as much as The Isle of the Lost, though.

Another thing... This was supposed to be about evil villains, right? Well where the hell were they?! All the villains do is talk about how eeeevviill they are, but they never really do anything "evil". I get it, they've been stuck on this island for a pretty long time, and maybe some *cough*all of them have lost their touch. But even the kids man. WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN?! Yeah, they're the same as their parents. The only difference being that all their parents ever do is complain how their kids arn't eeeevviill enough.

Right off the bat in the Prologue, Malificent just yells a bit and everyone gets scared and runs off. The thing is, these arn't just townsfolk, THEY'RE THE BADDEST BADDIES IN DISNEY! The thing that really set me off though was that THE EVIL QUEEN HERSELF just fled like some mere plebeian at the sound of Malificent. Wow. Then there's Malificent's kid, Mal. She's also the one to be feared for the kids, but the worst thing she ever does is steal, graffiti, and be rude to people sometimes. All these "villains" are just a bunch of wimps basically. They don't even booze it up when they have a secret party while one of their moms are out of town.

The reason for these problems is that this is a book about teenagers aimed at middle graders. It can't have anything too scandalous as to not stain the brains of the youth. This book reminded me of the original Monster High books in that way. I enjoyed those books, as ridiculous as they were, and I enjoyed The Isle of the Lost as well--despite my complaints.

It was interesting to see the kids of these villains, and how they live their lives on the island. I didn't really like the parts through Prince Ben's perspective, too much trying-to-be-politics.

Wow this is a pretty negative review, but it was alright you know? Three stars. Pick it up if you think the premise sounds interesting.

Bonus!
Here's the movie trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_P_w...

Here's the first six minutes of the movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Zm9D...

And the first episode of Decendants: Wicked World: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Lphb..., which is an animated webseries of the kids set after the events of the movie, so mild spoilers.

Having just watched all of these myself, this movie seems to be sooo cheesy and different from the book... can't wait to watch it!

Also they're apparently making a second movie, but I haven't seen the first one yet so I don't care!

View all my reviews
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

Review: 寄宿学校のジュリエット（３）

寄宿学校のジュリエット（３） by 金田陽介 My rating: 5 of 5 stars Brb, crying. Not actually, though. Like, I didn’t shed any actual tears or even get close to it, it’s just that this series… is so good . The romance between Romeo and Juliet is still weirdly innocent, but the actual story is so engrossing and entertaining. It also seems like almost literally every single character is complex and interesting and multi-layered. (Only the background characters like Maru’s lackeys are undeveloped, but honestly they really don’t need any development anyway.) The relationships between characters keep getting more and more complex, and the situations that the characters have to deal with are also super juicy. This is such an addicting series. My initial problem with Romeo and Juliet’s relationship was that it seemed pretty unhealthy and one-sided to me. Later, I found it very weird how sexually immature they both are, and how un-intimate their relationship is. What is interest...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: Lulu Is a Rhinoceros

Lulu Is a Rhinoceros by Jason Flom My rating: 3 of 5 stars The second I saw the cover of this book and read the synopsis I immediately thought that this was going to be a book that uses animals to create an allegory about transsexuality, as another installment in the growing genre of kid’s LGBTQA+ books. The whole "that's what she sees when she looks in the mirror" business felt really on the nose, and I feel like the authors purposefully used this wording in order to generate buzz around this book. In actuality, this felt like any other normal kids book. You have a character who feels misunderstood by their peers, and so they go on a "journey" to find and/or prove themselves and eventually end up finding peace with who they are and/or a group who accepts them. To me, the story was told in a way that presented Lulu like any other silly character in a children's book that had a silly problem stemming from their silly misco...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: Bossypants

Bossypants by Tina Fey My rating: 3 of 5 stars Let me set the scene: Last week I was in Phys Ed class playing the ol' badminton. Our school only has one gym, and my class 60 kids. So you can imagine how cramped it was. Each team had 3 people on the court at a time, and yes, it was a mess. And then one of my partners slammed me in the right eyeball with their racquet. My glasses broke into three pieces as they tumbled to the hardwood gym floor. This was the second time my face had been assaulted resulting in broken frames, so you could say I was a broken-glasses veteran. With my experience I didn't freak out, just was slightly annoyed. Nothin' some good old super glue can't fix, right? So I tried to continue playing but I quickly realized that I could no longer keep my eye open. It felt extremely irritated and even if I shut just the one and kept the other open, it still hurt. When I closed both of them, then it was a little better. Re...
Post a Comment
Read more