Before I get into this review, you must know I love Lewis and Tolkien and their works. So, when I received this book as a Christmas gift from two dear friends of mine, I was ecstatic to read it and wasn't disappointed one bit.

This book does an incredible job of setting the stage of the world and the ideas that were starting to rise in the few years before the war. How quickly the nations and young men jumped into the war because of the social demand by both friends, family, and the Church. It paints a sobering reality of what the soldiers faced and how hugely different this war was from wars of the past. It dives into both Tolkien and Lewis's experiences during the war and what they drew from it for both their writings and their lives.

This book was an amazing and sobering ride for me as the author uses many quotes from soldiers that lived through it to help paint a picture of the great trial the soldiers and civilians caught up in this Great War went through. It helped portray the feeling of dread that the world dived quickly into as the war drew on year after year, causing some to think it would never end.

The last half of the book helps lift your spirit as it turns to the years after the war and how Tolkien and Lewis didn't go with the culture to see the war and the world as a hopeless and useless place but to point it all back to the one true hope. Using their experience to help craft stories that don't focus on political moments or cultural waves but on the eternal struggle of evil within everyone and many other excellent points I don't want to ruin for you.

A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War is an insightful book that I would recommend to any reader! Pick this book up and add it to their library. You can thank me later.

Thanks for reading!

​The way I was going into this movie was with high hopes but also a tiny bit of worry that it wouldn't hold up to the hype. 

That quickly faded with the first scene of the film, a scene that set a much different tone than any other X-Men movie. A tone that similar to a noir western that happens to have superheroes in it, but you will find no capes or costumes here. This is an R-rated superhero movie that uses its rating to help set the tone and build its characters instead of being R just to be R.

The rest of the film is a journey no other superhero film. From the writing to the editing, everything either hits the mark spot on or gets super close.

Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart give their best performances of these characters with Dafne Keen who gives one of the best performances by a child actress or actor I have ever seen. The rest of the cast does an exceptional job in their roles.

The cinematography is excellent, and the score is unique and creative! One scene did a great job of making you feel like you were enduring something that Logan was enduring as well, and once it was over, you felt a small bit of relief before jumping back in it.

The action scenes are great, and the edits never get confusing as to what is happening. Though I personally would have liked to see some wider shots of the fight scenes, I believe the director was smart with keeping the camera close in on the fights as that is how the Wolverine fights.

The writing is geniuses as it focuses more on the main characters than big set piece moments or how this movie fits into the messed up X-Men timeline.

Speaking of the timeline, you may wonder how this movie fits with all the time travel and reboots the series has faced. The movie doesn't spend any time in trying to explain any of it and just stays on the characters and where they are. However, the best explanation for the timeline I've heard is from the smart guys on The Weekly Planet Podcast. They believe that the real X-Men cannon is Logan and the first X-Men film. The rest of the movies are just made up stories. This is stated by Logan as he finds a stash of X-Men comics and makes a comment how it didn't happen like that.

That is another beauty of this film, you can go with this theory or another one of your own, and it still stands as a great movie. Because of its focus on a small cast of deep characters instead of a shallow sea of characters and a large plot that is becoming more popular than ever.

If you can't tell by now, I loved Logan and would dare say it is my favorite comic book movie ever. That doesn't make it perfect as I am sure the next few times I see it I will see some mistakes.  But it is definitely worth a watch at the theater and is a perfect send off for Professor X and the Wolverine!

Logan and all rights are Copyrights of Marvel Comics and Fox Studios