Kdrama Review: Tale of the Nine-Tailed

 Drama: Tale of the Nine-Tailed

 Genre: Fantasy/Horror

Starring: Kim Dong Wook, Jo Bo Ah, Kim Bum

Rating: ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ 

Everyone was talking about this one so of course I had join in the buzz. I caught up pretty quickly and it was fun to watch the crazy finale about the same time everyone else was!

This is based on the Korean legend of nine tailed foxes (though I always though they were women, but what do I know?) And our lead guy is one of these foxes, with lots of power and magic and he's ruled the forest in the past and now he is wandering the human world trying to find his first love.

Yes, he was in love with a girl way back when but she died, and he is convinced she will be reborn again and he is determined to find her.  

And so then this girl enters into his life that he thinks might be her, but he is not at first convinced. But of course she is... and then she starts to remember her past life and that's when she is all... WHAT THE HECK!! 

Meanwhile, she ends up getting contaminated by a monster (another legend I'm assuming) called Imugi, who wants revenge on our fox dude. And he is going to use the girl to get it. 

WAH, things get complicated! It's a crazy detailed plot with magic, and horror elements. Lots of comedy and romance too. So much. It has it all.

The brothers, fighting for their lives during the zombie scene!

The side characters are awesome. Our dude has a brother who is half nine-tailed fox and he is quite the intense dude! At first we don't really know if he loves or hates his brother, but in the end, this relationship drives the show and is even better than the main romance. I cried a lot when he comes to these two. And the dude that played him was absolutely fantastic... and even though our main guy is played by a very famous actor, I think lots of people actually watched it to see this actor play the brother. (He's from the very famous beloved and not so beloved drama Boys Over Flowers.) 

Anyway, I would go so far as to say he stole the show. Wow. Crazy good!

Kim Bum as the brother that we all fell for!

And then, there's the dude who played the Imugi guy... what a beautiful villain he was! He also blew me away with his acting and I need to look up what else he's done. So good.... the villain you hate and love at the same time. But dang, he is a ruthless villain! And all with a smirky smarmy swoony smile. LOL.

Lee Tae Ri as the beautiful and very scary villain.

So yeah, I pretty much loved this one. What was there not to love? It has everything!

Here's the trailer:

And wow I loved so much music from this one... how to pick one to share! How about Shownu's ballad? It gives me chills.

Book Review: Thorn by Intisar Khanani

 Book: Thorn by Intisar Khanani

Genre: YA Fantasy

Rating: ★ ★ ★

This is quite the fun retelling of Goose Girl. The story opens when our girl is getting betrothed to the prince in the neighboring kingdom, who she of course doesn't know, but she is actually quite happy to go away because her own people in her kingdom treat her like crap, especially her brother who has abused her all these years. So she is actually kind of excited to be leaving.

She has a companion girl going with her, this girl wants to take revenge on our girl, and that opportunity comes when a sorcerous wants to use the situation to get back at the king and the prince. So, as you might remember from the fairy tale, she switches their bodies, and the companion is now the one going to get married and our girl ends up becoming the goose girl and the stable girl for the castle.

She actually loves this life and makes all sorts of friends, but she needs to warn the prince of this magic lady who wants to kill him. But how to do that? Hmmm....

Anyway, and so it goes and there's lots of crazy things that happen and great characters and mystery and... yeah...  it's pretty good all in all. It bogged for a me in parts, but I really quite enjoyed it. 

Kdrama Review: More Than Friends

 Drama: More Than Friends

Genre: Romance

Starring: Ong Seong Wu, Shin Ye Eun, Kim Dong Jun, P.O

Rating: ❤ ❤ ❤

This is a drama about a group of friends all struggling with their relationship statuses. One girl has been with her boyfriend for ten years and he's ready to get married, but she doesn't really want to, especially after her mom gets sick. One girl hasn't really been in a relationship and she thinks no one likes her, but then a dude likes her and she is all happy until.. well... stuff happens. And the guy who really likes her has been just right there all along. 

And then our main girl, she has loved the guy from high school all these ten years, but he told her he only thinks of her as a friend... which makes her sad, so she jumps in and out of relationships like crazy. Then one day the guy appears on the scene again, and she is fighting not to like him all over again. And this time it's a bit different, because he actually likes her too he's decided.

And there's a really cute second male lead CEO who is falls for our main girl and is going to treat her so good! But she is still pining for the other guy... the one who is all... yeah... we're just friends. Except he is, like I said, also now confused on that issue.

Anyway, it was cute sometimes, but mostly the back and forthing and wishy washy-ness of all these characters sort of made me crazy. About the middle I was just like... GUYS figure this out already! AH!! 

The story that made me most crazy was the girl who wouldn't get married. Her dude was THE BEST GUY ever... and she just blows him off because... "I'm struggling and I don't want to bring you into my struggles." Ugh. 

Anyway, when our main guy starts to come around, then all his cuteness comes out (because I watched this drama for his cuteness which I am familiar with from other places). But wow, when he is ornery, he can really be ornery too!

Also P.O from Block B played the friend who wants to be more than friends with the second girl... and he is absolutely adorable, as expected. Love him so much!

So bottom line, this one was fun and good but just really okay. Not one that blew me away or anything like dramas usually tend to do!

Here's a trailer (well several trailers in one actually):

And here's the really nice song sung by our lead dude himself (Ong Seong Wu) since he's an amazing singer... and this song ended up on my favorite drama songs of the year. 

Reading Recap November 2020

 

I need a new mask....

Well, I thought I was reading a lot this month, but I still only got through two books. Sigh. 

Layoverland by Gabby Noone: What happens if when you die you end up in a layover on your way to where ever you've been assigned? Because you have unresolved issues to work out first. 

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern: A beautifully lyrical story about layers of worlds underneath the world we know.

Favorite: By far my favorite was The Starless Sea. I just really enjoy the storytelling and writing with this author!

Plans for December:

• Read Daisy Jones and the Six for book club
• Get to the ARCs I still need to read!
• Continue to the Beehive long list reading!
• See if I can make my Goodreads goal? I think I'll probably miss this by only a couple books. Sigh.

How's everyone else doing? Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one reading these days, even the little bit I'm doing. Even book club isn't reading any more really. Man I miss the comradery that we used to have in the book blogging world. Where is everyone? I need to find you all again!

2020 in Kpop

 I'm working on a bunch of different year-end videos to show how we've survived this year thanks to kpop. Here's the first one which is fast clips of a bunch of favorite moments from music videos from this year. Check it out! Maybe there's a moment you'll love too!

Book Review: The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

 Book: The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

Genre: Magic realism

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

As with all magic realism books, sometimes I have a hard time wrapping my head around what's going on, because it can all be very confusing. This book is no exception to this, but the thing is.. I didn't care! Because everything is just so beautiful and poetic and romantic and... just... cool. Pretty sure I'm not going to be able to find words to describe this one!

We have our guy Zachary, who is a book nerd type minding his own business at college, when one day he finds a book in the library. The first weird thing happens when he tries to check it out and they have no record of the book, so that's weird. But they let him take it and then the second weird thing happens when he's reading and he realizes he is in the book. It talks about a time when he was a kid and he saw a door painted on the side of a wall, and he didn't take hold of the knob and open it. 

And then the story ends with the words "not yet." 

And that "not yet" haunts him and he becomes obsessed trying to figure out where this book came from and why he is in the story. If he needs to find and open that door. This leads him to attend a literary costume party where he meets a girl dressed up like Max from Where the Wild Things Are... and he meets a dude who tells him a story in the dark... and afterwards he is entrusted to the task of trying to reclaim yet another book for this dude... and then he finds himself totally mixed up in a fantastical magical world that all takes place deep deep in the Earth.

Which is where the Starless Sea can be found of course.

And it's down there in this world that he discovers all sorts of interesting and crazy stories, and stories within stories, and layers upon layers. It's really quite a beautiful word, full of books, and cats, and food, and art and very romantic beautiful people. 

I'm still not sure if there was supposed to be a point to this book. If all these things were a symbolism for something. If so, it went over my head, but like I said...it didn't matter. I totally enjoyed this journey.

I will add that the structure of the book is fun. There are five or six parts, each one features a different book that Zachary happens upon, so we get that book's story, told in between Zachary's story. And in the end we see how they all come together. Very fun.

I think if you are a fan of her previous book, The Night Circus, you really must read this one too. 

Kdrama Review: Kiss Goblin

 Drama: Kiss Goblin

Genre: Fantasy romance

Starring: Bae In Hyuk, Jeon Hye Won

Rating: ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤

I saw someone recommend this one and it looked fun and fast, so I watched it in just a couple of sittings. It's 12 episodes, only 10 to 15 minutes each, which means this is more like watching a movie than a drama. I watched it on Viki, but pretty sure it's on Youtube too. 

It's about a dude who is a goblin and he wants to be human. In order to do this, he has to kiss 10 people at which point, he will gain a new emotion that he must learn and process. After he passes the test, he can become human.

Our girl is sick of people. She works at a cafe and everyone is rude and obnoxious. And she has just suffered a not so nice breakup. And she is just done. And says over and over again that she hates people. 

Their stories come together when she happens to be nearby after he kisses someone. Suddenly an exorcist appears whose job it is to kill off the goblins and protect the humans. When she gets in the way of this and they realize he can't hurt her, she decides she wants to protect this dude who she is suddenly attracted to and feels very protective of. 

And so it goes from there! 

Very cute and fun. Lots of kissing of course. And an impressive quick attachment to characters in such a short time. Just what I love. And it's especially fun to watch the goblin character go from very emotionless to experiencing all the emotions. 

Here's the fun scene when they realize she can protect him:

And here's the song with clips!