What’s Up 2020: Week 22

Week 22 wraps up the month of May and marks over 2 months of lockdown phase. Its been one of the slowest weeks in terms of progress as I had a lot of work stuff to take care of that affected a lot of other progress. However, I still managed to get a few things ticked off the list. Let’s check it out!

READING

• To Wake The Dead (The Dead Dreamer #2) by Sarah Lampkin (Review)

Currently reading: No Signal

Book 2 of To Wake The Dead was definitely a fun read. Its a series that reminds me a lot of watching TV series like Shadowhunters and The Vampire Diaries both in the fullness of events and the direction it chooses to take. Its mostly compliments and you can check it out in the review which is already posted and linked above.

I’ve moved on to an upcoming blogging commitment as I tackle another sequel of a book that I reviewed earlier this year called Proximity (review). This has a wonderful world building set up from the first book as well and is something of a tech thriller which is rather well thought out. So far, the sequel is pretty decent and hopefully it will remain that way. However, I am still in the first half so we will see.

PLAYING

• Orwell: Keeping an Eye on You (2016)

Orwell was released in 2016 and is something similar to the premise of No Signal where this reality has a government sets up outside people to monitor the information of everyone to protect their society. Of course, the debate is whether it works for the people or against them, right? Its an investigative style of game where you read through articles and find info to put together target people profiles. This is just Season 1 of Orwell and its out upcoming game review on Game Warp so I won’t talk too much about it.

WATCHING

• Flowers in the Attic (1987)
• Joker (2019)

Another slow week in movie watching! I’ve just been incredibly indecisive on watching movies so its slowed down the progress as I compile a watch list for the alphabet themed Double Feature. Its cutting it close since I’m running out of movies to review so need to pick up the pace. However, we did have to catch up on a rental for Joker that was about to expire. Joker had a lot of talk last year and we wanted to give it a watch to see whether it lived up to all the good reviews. For the most part, it did. Joaquin Phoenix takes on Joker in a different way and I’ll talk about it more in an upcoming double feature (once I find a film to pair it with outside of the alphabet double feature…).

BINGING

• Please Love Me (Season 1, 2019)
• Youth With You 2 (Season 2, 2020)
• The Great Canadian Baking Show (Season 3, 2019)

Currently binging: Produce Camp 2020, Me to Us, Woof Meow Story, Go Fridge 6, Welcome Back To Sound, Yes I Do 2, The Big Flower Fight

A show knocked off the currently binging list from last week but as usual, I’m adding more to it while catching up with some that I’ve put aside for a week or so. At the same time, I didn’t return to one or two shows this week while at the same time starting up some completely new shows. One of them is going back to a show I had meant to watch last year but didn’t called Please Love Me which was pretty bingeworthy other than a few elements that I’ll talk about when I get around to the TV Binge. I’m deciding on what my next show to watch is since I’m debating on whether to watching something currently releasing or catching up on another of last year’s dramas (or this year’s) that I didn’t get a chance when it was first released. Either way, I’ll figure it out while watching a bunch of variety shows.

That’s it for Week 22 recap!
What have you been reading/watching/playing/binging?

To Wake The Dead (The Dead Dreamer #2) by Sarah Lampkin

Review for To Dream is To Die, Book 1 of The Dead Dreamer Series HERE

To Wake The Dead
(Dead Dreamer #2)
By: Sarah Lampkin

*Book received in exchange for honest review*

Brenna Whit teeters the line between the living and the dead. Now that she’s back for her sophomore year at Nephesburg College, she’s determined to focus on the waking world. But when her own soul is trying to kill her and a new Dead Dreamer is fighting for power, Brenna is dragged back into the world of the dead.

The Gatekeepers are doing everything they can to restore the power they once held over the town of Nephesburg. With a mysterious set of twins arriving in town to help them prepare, Brenna must decide what’s important: continuing to hide her secret or reveal herself and fight for what she believes is right. The decision could end up leading to a permanent death for Brenna so she must choose wisely. – Goodreads

To Wake The Dead is the second book in The Dead Dreamer Series. The story picks up a few months after the events of the first book as university resumes again for Brenna. As a sequel, the story itself fully utilizes the foundation of the first one and builds from those events. However, its more of a second level deal. In the first book, it showed more of the general world of how the alternate plane, Fade would work and the different roles of Dead Dreams, Watcher, the Gatekeepers and more. The story goes further this time as it picks up those pieces and drives it towards something with a deeper scheme with even more characters and other elements involved and some more mysteries. It all says a lot to the entire world building for the premise itself and its incredibly well thought out as more factors come into play.

The characters are mostly the same as before. To Wake The Dead is in first person narration by its star Dead Dreamer, Brenna who tries to navigate the situation. What really builds on her character is that its not only a “battle” with the outside dangers in the Fade and the Gatekeepers but at the same time, its a battle with herself, the whole soul and spirit fight makes for a lot of the intrigue as her inner person, Maura, speaks up once in a while and then also has its danger elements. These unknown moments creates for changes in her mood and unexpected results of different severity and show of abilities that were unseen before. There’s a constant changing element presented each time and it makes Brenna become an intriguing character to follow in her adventures. Of course, it helps that her friends, Aeria and Damon also have a great part as they also get pulled deeper into the equation. The three actually find a balance in their characters especially with the banter between Damon and Brenna (which started off in the first book) and these situations that come up in the story also create some tension as expected.

Overall, To Wake The Dead is a very decent sequel. There’s more depth in world building, plot development and character development. The story does start off a little slower than the first book therefore, pacing at the beginning dragged just a little bit to set up the new situation. Once things started moving again, it was an engaging read. Solid sequel and can’t wait for the next book!

Score: 4 out of 5

What’s Up 2020: Week 21

Welcome to What’s Up weekly recap of Week 21 of 2020! Last week was somehow very busy or perhaps, its just that I had some writing slump as I’m trying to push through some TV binges and they take a little more writing motivation. Either way, it seems balance is the hardest to achieve in these categories on a weekly basis. This time, I’ve managed to get more reading during the week and now, movie watching is decreasing. I’ll talk more about it all in the different parts below!

READING

Currently reading: To Wake the Dead

I’ve been working hard on reading To Wake the Dead. So far, I’m almost halfway through the book and its been a pretty fun read. I can’t say that I’m quite as enamored with it as I was in the first book at the moment but its still a solid sequel. There’s still half a book to go and I’m in a semi crunch time to start up the next book so you should be seeing a review for this one sooner rather than later!

It sure feels nice to get back into some morning or evening reading time! Its been actually rather motivating and a nice change in pace to not stare at the PC monitor all day.

PLAYING

• Color Spots

Currently playing: Orwell, M.O.N.I.T.O.R.

Steam released their Spring Cleaning Event so I’ve been playing around their suggested games. After a little bit of a back and forth on what to review for the next Game Warp, we finally decided on Orwell and that’s what I’ve been playing lately. Its very weird because the event queued up a bunch of surveillance style games on my list including the free game MONITOR that I’ve played less than an hour of before it got hit with a bug that froze it (probably before a save point but I’m scared to go look to find out that I have to replay the section) so I had to shut it down.

On a fun note, I don’t finish a lot of mobile games unless its story-based but Color Spots has 100 levels of main game and 9 extra levels and I actually was having so much fun with this one that I finished all 100 levels and working through the bonus levels right now. I’d say that’s as close to finishing a mobile game as I’d get, right?

WATCHING

• Zodiac (2007)

Currently watching: Flavors of Youth

As the week ended, I had started up Flavors of Youth but didn’t finish yet. The very sad watching section consists of one movie. Maybe its the long Fincher movie that took a lot of energy to watch and then I just didn’t feel like watching anything. Its not the truth though but more that real life took over and I had to make choices and movie watching was put in the back burner. However, my first time watch of Zodiac (if you don’t count the unfinished first time watch that I dozed off and forgot to go back to finish it) was pretty good. I’m not a fan of the length but its a pretty good movie to say the least.

BINGING

• Oh! My Emperor (Season 1, 2018)
• X-Fire (Season 1, 2015)
• The Love Equations (2020)

Currently binging: Me To Us, Youth With You 2, Produce Camp 2020, Oh! My Emperor 2, Welcome Back To Sound, Yes I Do 2, Go Fridge S6

I’ve been on a Sean Xiao revisit lately since its been pretty much 2 months and I’m still stuck on The Untamed and a little bothered by the whole stupidity (my opinion on the situation) that he went through or is currently still “kind of” going through, I guess. Either way, I went back to watch the competition show that he joined that kickstarted his career called X-Fire and then went on to watch the TV series with the X-NINE boys called Oh! My  Emperor. I only finished Season 1 and needed to take a moment before continuing Season 2. Love Sean Xiao’s character but not a big fan of the main male lead though. The female lead though has already been in 2 Chinese dramas in 2020 so its inevitable that I’ll watch her in more shows and she’s actually rather fun to watch.

However, the highlight of the week goes to The Love Equations ending and its still such a sweet romance. Its a little quirkier than the previous sister series but this male lead is also rather memorable. I’d have to say that pros and cons in all three. I wonder how long they can make these series because its a nice break from those really dramatic ones, plus these ones usually stay around the 25 episode length which is a well-paced length.

Lots of TV going on so I’m losing track of when certain shows release their new episodes so I’m taking a little break from TV right now to catch up on all the series that I need to do TV binges for. Probably will go back to rewatch some of them in the background as I write or something (if I can stop rewatching The Untamed…).

That’s it for this weekly recap!
What have you been watching/reading/binging/playing?