Rukariver's road

 "Don't fear if nothing to fear hasn't appeared." - Eero Perkola

Rukajärven tie (Rukariver's road) is a post winter war-time movie directed by Olli Saarela. The movie first hit the cinema in January 1999.

The movie begins with a group of soldiers, that work under the main character lieutenant Eero Perkola, spending time on a beach in finland, waiting for orders for the next mission. However it is very hard to understand what exactly is going on in some of these moments as there is no build-up and possibility to understand who these characters are, as there are many. The other part of the story's drama aside from the main war part, is spent between the main character and her bride, Kaarina, sending letters and believing either of them dies every now and then. I think the beginning was meant for the watchers to get an understanding of these characters as stories usually have these "calm" times in the beginning to build-up to the serious stuff, and change the mood, but in this movie it fell flat on its face as the directing was terrible at times. I think the movie wasn't that bad but it felt low budget and try-hard. The writing was cookie cutter war-time stuff you'd find absolutely anywhere, no inspiration whatsoever. The story is just a linear yet somehow messy because of the terrible directing and dialogue which is hard to follow. The story is simple: a group of soldiers journey through their way to somewhere (who knows where, they just got some mission) and investigate every little building out there instead of looking back. That's it.

The climax of the movie happens in a forest where the main group takes on russians from behind and alot of explosions and shooting happens. I was *yawning* the whole way through though. As the deaths in this movie were predictable as hell, the characters acted in their archetypes (asshole idiot guy with the grenade and the one with the injured russian...) and when it did something unpredictable, it was god damn stupid. The movie after halfway through, well a bit before also, with the bride's situation after her group got killed by russians you know, was filled with deus ex machina moments that were also predictable (the main character obviously doesn't die, the bride, the young boys father dying, etc.). The ending made no sense (the bride, the MC and the injured guy who drowned??) and it felt cheesy. Out of the 20 or so characters I only remember 2 (because I looked them up) and wrote down 2 of those idiotic characters' names. None of them stood out in any shape or form .

The acting is kind of bad. The music is classical, which was expected and nothing special, and chuch-music like at one point, which surprised me I guess. It seemed rather low budget to me. I guess it was supposed to catch the realism of the war times but this movie was created in 1999. That's not an old movie by any means, they could have atleast tried making it better as the dialogue felt like it start-cut-start-cut, very obnoxious now that I think of it after watching. 4/10. I could care less how much of a historical value this has on some people. Terribly average plot with mostly everything else being bad. And I actually thought it had some potential half way through. I guess the movie aimed too high in presentation.

"Family guy"

"It goes without saying that we feel more comfortable with out spouses, parents and siblings. Perhaps that's why we treat them differently from others."
- Unknown 

Just a post I wanted to write about today. On news there, on the family column, they talk about about a post in an article where a person had written on facebook that he wants to tell someone he doesn't personally know about how great of a father he is. In the article the writer states that he has seen a man walking from one place to another with his two children and it seems almost as if the concept of time doesn't exists to the father, just the moment with his children. 
The writer says how impressed he is to the attention the father gives his son, as he's walking just as fast as the son instead of hurrying or slowing down as he speaks with his son. The writer also mentions how he hopes for the father to see his message one day and not get scared if someone scary looking says hello, as that person just wants to tell him how great of a parent he is. The original post is tagged as "an emotional message to an unknown father."

We live in a time where we try to make the world a better place in every possible way while dealing with out own problems. In the past, especially during war-time periods, horrible things have happened where millions of family and friends of everyone, have lost their lives. The problems with ISIS are just on the news constantly and it gives anyone negative thoughts about how the world just hasn't changed, and it probably can't, but posts where an individual person wants to tell someone how great of a parent he is, can work to light the darkness in this postmodern, digital age we live in right now where information, both good and bad, get shared around the world in the blink of an eye...

The somewhat ironic thing about this whole thing was that the writer of the original post said that he never said his admirement personally to the father, face to face, because he didn't want to bother their family time. After this post got published on the family column, however, the unknown father apparently has got over 13 000 shares about the original post by now. Oh well.

Münster's case

 “The ability to read becomes devalued when what one has learned to read adds nothing of importance to one's life.”
- Bruno Bettelheim


"Münster's fall" is part of the Inspector Van Veeteren crime&thriller series created by a swedish writer, Håkan Nesser. The novel was adapted into a 1 hour 30 minute movie in 2005 by a swedish director Rickard Petrelius. 

I will be talking about the film version here.
The movie starts with classical music playing in the backgrounds in the middle of a snowy winter night. A man could be seen in bed with his wife and children, building up with the badly written family drama. He wakes up and answers the phone to go to a crime scene, urgently. As he arrives to the scene, a police car is waiting for him and one of the cops tells him about a wine seller called Waldemar dying by drowning with the time of death being at around 20:00 (8 pm).
Next morning, the investigation continues. Münster, the main character of the movie, was the one who was called to the crime scene and the first inspector there at night. Münster had been investigating the case since 4 am and now the police department wants to replace him with another person, which is the part where the ridicilous work drama starts.
There are couple weird points that come up during the investigation as the murderer put in alot of effort in order to kill the wine seller despite him having a liver cancer, and the anticipated time of his natural death would have been in just a two month's time.
-They spend around 10 minutes asking about alibis from witnesses.
Next day, Reinhart, Münster's boss, is in a very angry mood and wants all good and bad news from Münster to know what to tell the media. This part is stupid throughout the movie as it's the same old cliche drama where the boss blames the worker for not sharing every little thing to him constantly.

 Afterwards they go through all the prime suspects and Münster keeps going with his investigation which leads to couple of stupid twists, basically: Münster gets beaten by a person, Münster gets him in handcuffs and takes him behind bars, the suspect's clothes have the victim's blood and Münster says that he found the murder weapon with the suspect's fingerprints and the suspect confesses to the Mürder and gets arrested. But wait, Münster says that everything was far too easy and that could not be the case. As it turns out, Münster just bluffed about finding the murder weapon. This brings alot of annoying work drama and the suspect simply was too drunk to remember anything so obviously his confession was nothing but a misunderstanding.
From here on out everyone except Münster is after the victimized suspect because of Münsters lie about the murder weapon. Münster's boss is angry. Another investigator "threatens" Münster because of a fake testimony. Münster's partner doesn't want him there. The police department seems to be in "gray area", but in reality it's rotten to the core.
At home, Münster's wife is crying because he doesn't talk with him (which comes out of left field, really forced drama) and the drama lasts for a minute at best and disappears until it appears every quarter of an hour or so for another minute. Dumb. Afterwards Münster keeps with his investigation solo and some twists happen.

The last part of the movie is spent watching Van Veeteren solve "Münster's case" as Münster got too close to the suspect and was left in a garage waiting to die.
Just to mock the watchers, in the end the narration says that "Van Veeteren got the killer's confession in 22 minutes." As we're all left in awe of this huge waste of time that Veeteren could do to save everyone some brain cells and time since the beginning instead of having to come up and save the main character and do his job near the end of the movie, the movie ends in an atmospheric epilogue where the true culprit is in jail, hitting his head to the wall in the jail, reminiscing of his younger days of the moments where his father and sisters danced together, and the moments where he woke up during nights to eerie voices.

The story of Münsters fall is pretty basic in its execution and has certain tropes we've surely seen before such as an impossibly smart mentor-type character that leaves Münster in his shadow. It still manages to have a decent atmosphere you'd expect to find in a crime thriller that's not too far from how things work in real world. Too bad the way the characters acted like idiots throughout the whole thing was just stupid, no one was supporting Münster, his wife started to whine about him using his time to try and solve the case every 15 minutes. The drama at home got annoying quick and was just badly written, and the drama at work was blown out of proportions with every cop just acting like an asshole towards Münster. I wanted to give the movie a 6/10 but after thinking about it, it's 5/10 at best in its weight class, which is above low-tier crime fiction.

JoJo's Stardust Crusaders

"THE WORLD!!! - ZA WARUDO!!!"
-Dio Brando

Stardust Crusaders is the third story arc of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure series by Hirohiko Araki. The animated version by David Production adapted part 3 of JoJo into two 24-episode seasons, making it the longest part of the series that has been animated so far.

 Part 3 is different from part 1 and 2 in a way that it's almost completely episodic villain of the week type of story.
It is revealed that Dio indeed did manage to get Jonathan's body and hide in the explosion-proof casket that he was in for a century until it was lifted up by some people. Dio's vampire blood and Jonathans lineage formed these things called stands. The way how they work isn't too clear to me but there are quite a few stand users around the world that the main cast has to fight against with their own stands as "only a stand can damage another stand." Probably because they're manifestations of the users soul or so, which mean that physical beings can't hurt them since they're spiritual beings.

The story of Stardust Crusaders goes like this (not in order):
We're introduced to the main character and the JoJo of part 3, Jotaro Kujo, the grandson of part 2's main character Joseph Joestar..
Jotaro got himself behind bars because he was afraid that a "ghost" that was protecting him would hurt Jotaro's mother. Jotaro's mother calls her grandfather to help Jotaro and sure enough Joseph comes as fast as he could, with company. Joseph explains the existence of stands that appeared with Dio's revival to everyone in the Joestar family with the help of a fire-type stand user called Muhammad Avdol. 
Later on Jotaro meets up with a person brainwashed by Dio to kill him called Noriaki Kakyoin, a stand user that Jotaro has to defeat. Kakyoin hates himself of getting caught up in Dio's pace and joins Jotaro's crusade to get Dio as Joseph's daughter, Jotaro's mother, Holly is revealed to have a stand also. However as stands can be useful, they can just as well be deadly. Holly's weak physique since childhood made her stand make her bedsick and get her killed in 50 days.
 From this point on the journey starts. The journey is spent in moving from one place to another and spending an episode there to fight against a stand user.
-The group takes a plane trip to make it to Dio as fast as possible as they believe that defeating Dio will make the stands disappear in the whole Joestar family. However Dio sent a kamikazer insect-type stand user to the plane.
The fight afterwards is an important one since once again, they have to fight a stand user that was being manipulated by Dio who realizes his own weakness and joins the party, a swordsman-stand user, Jean Pierre Polnareff.
-They fight a water-type stand user.
-They fight a nonhuman stand user with a special, huge and physical stand.
-They have to fight a grudge-type stand.
-They fight an impersonation-type stand user.
-They fight two stand users. A gun-type stand user and a light-type stand user. Polnareff gets plot progression and there might be something you can consider a twist.
-They have to fight an Empress stand user.
-They have to fight a car-type stand user. Another physical stand.
-They have to fight a Justice stand user, the mother of the light-type stand user.
-They have to fight a Lovers stand user.
-They have to figure out a way to defeat a Sun-type, large-scale stand.
-The group has to face against a dream-type stand user.
-They have to defeat a genie-type stand user. Another twist after this fight.
-They have to defeat a transforming stand while in a submarine.
-A new character, Iggy, sand-type stand user, joins the group and they have to defeat a water.type stand user that makes Kakyoin blind.
-They have to fight against a face-forming stand user and a future sight stand user.
-They have to defeat a physical sword-type stand.
-They have to defeat a magnet-type stand user.
-They have to defeat an anti-aging stand user.
-They have to defeat a gambling soul-type stand user. This fight is pretty intense.
-They have to face against the future seeing stand user and the gun-type stand user once again.
-Iggy the Dog vs Pet Shop the Falcon, an ice-type stand user. A good fight.
-They have to defeat the younger brother of the gambler they fought against, the brother's stand reads the souls of others.
-They easily get rid of an illusion-type stand user.

After all the other fights they have to face against a darkness/dimension-type stand user called Vanilla Ice and the 2nd to last fight in part 3. This fight is very crazy and Vanilla Ice was not to be taken lightly, sacrifices are to be made in order to defeat him. Vanilla is the most loyal to Dio out of them all, so much he'd kill himself for it.

After getting rid of Vanilla Ice, it's time for the main course of the series. The fight against Dio Brando, the stand user of The World, the most powerful stand of them all. This fight is the best in all of JoJo's that have been animated so far even though in order to defeat Dio, it had to be in a somewhat nonsensical way as I don't get why Jotaro would have practically the same stand just because he's a Joestar and Dio has Jonathans body etc. Anyway, the final, climax part of JoJo Stardust Crusaders is it's savior in my opinion. Dio was very powerful, smart and took all the possibilities of losing into account as long as he could keep his head calm.

The openings and endings of Stardust Crusaders didn't really stick with me, but once you reach episode 47 with Dio's stand's powers getting revealed, the studio pulls something amazing with the 4th opening (very subtle but 'he's' been there since episode 1).
Part 3 was a very monotonous series for me. I didn't really like most of the episodes after the beginning until D'Arby the Gambler. After that Iggy's fight was good and afterwards Vanilla Ice fight was good, and Dio's fight was the best. The series feels like a waste of time with season 1's first few episodes being spent on gathering the allies and arriving in the area where Dio is at somewhere in episode 24. The second season is spent on trying to find the place where Dio is hiding somewhere in the area but about last 9 episodes were very good and they spent a good deal of time with the fight against Dio, unlike the other fights in the series. The strength of Stardust Crusaders is it's ability to almost forcefully make you care about these characters, stick with them for a monotonous adventure and see the ridicilous stand abilities they. fight against, and in the end get a tremendous, very good pay-off from the whole story that doesn't really make you have bad aftertaste of the journey itself. The aftermath of the story post-Dio fight is just skimmed over which was a shame.
Season 1 of S.C. - 5/10 for me as I don't really care about villain-of-the-week fights, but the abilities of the stands are very creative, however the episodes overall felt very meh even then. Season 2 of S.C. - 8/10 for great finale fights. JoJo isn't story heavy series so I judge it by the fights and how well it keeps my interest during the episodes. JoJo part 3 the Stardust Crusaders is a story that I sort of disliked as I was watching it, but look back at the "journey" with a smile. That's one of the reasons why I prefer it over part 1 also aside from the final fights and a better main cast. 

And just like Holly, I'm physically weak right now and need some well earned rest. Meanwhile waiting for part 4.... The Diamond is Unbreakable!

JoJo's Battle Tendency

"Like a bloody storm
Heat up like a bloody stone
Carved into the bloody lineage of destiny  
Floating and indelible, bonds of pride~
Clasped together...!"
- Coda

Battle Tendency is the 2nd part of Hirohiko Araki's popular JoJo's Bizarre Adventure series. The 2012 animated version of JoJo, created by David Production, adapts parts 1 and 2 in its first 24 episode season. Battle Tendency takes place 49 years after the end of Phantom Blood (part 1). It spans through episodes 10 to 24 of the first season.

What can I say? This part is by far my favourite out of the ones that have been adapted so far, and the one I'd consider overall the best.

The story
The main character and the JoJo of this part is a young adult male called Joseph Joestar, the grandson of the original JoJo, Jonathan Joestar. At the beginning of the story, characters from part 1 such as Speedwagon make an appearance and another character who turns corrupt. In this part of JoJo we learn that the stone mask that Dio Brando used to become a superhuman vampire is actually just one of many created by the antagonists of B.T. in order to conquer their own weakness one day- the Sun.
Joseph inherits Jonathans skill in using a power called Hamon that deals damage to vampires and is potentially much stronger at using it. The fights in Battle Tendency are written in a very clever and tense way, where the build-up from part 1, the shocking parts that Dio showed us to showcase just how unbeatable and strong vampires truly are when a simple slap on the face will blow half of a normal persons head off, works to create tension in part 2 because the readers/watchers at this point know of the power of Dio, so there's much more intensity in the writing when we get to see the characters face off against the creators of these masks. Crazy.
Let me tell something before I continue. Usually in shonen action series the tension is created by deaths that get nullified by later literal revivals. The final fights are usually world-scale Dragon Ball Z battles also where the enemy is an invincible immortal. The only way for the good guys to continue on with their lives is to do what, then? Well, ofcourse beat the invincible immortal god of their verse. How? By the author simply asspulling the answer. It doesn't matter what it is as the good guys will at one point pull a victory out of their back pockets.
Now what was the point of what I just said? JoJo part 2 is a battle series where Joseph tries to find three antagonists that created the vampire-creating masks. People that are affected by the masks become so horribly strong that they won't die from bullet wounds as they get regenerative abilities and superhuman strength. The creators of these masks, The Pillar Men, are on a tier of their own and it shows how much the scale of the fights can grow larger while the JoJo series parts switch from one to the other. However, even though the opposition seems impossible to defeat, the fights make sense as the powers aren't overly blown out of proportion and none of the characters can spam explosions or anything like that. "Where there's a will, there's a way" is a good way to put it.

 After the first three or so episodes of build-up and showing off the old and new characters of part 2, the actual story starts. A person that was taken to a Nazi lab around 5 years before the beginning of the story was still inside a pillar until Joseph arrived, and after the soldiers fed the pillar some blood, the pillar man, Santana, awakened. Joseph's fight against santana was very crazily executed, Santana could kill anyone but Joseph was planning around which is nice. Joseph is presented as a somewhat dumb, rebellious character with a big heart but while he's acting like that, in his mind he's always planning on what his next move is going to be. His motto is actually not a word or two, but his skill of being able to tell what the enemy is going to say next and being able to understand everyone's weakness.
After defeating Santana, things only get crazier as Joseph meets with a special type of person called Caesar Zeppeli. Caesar is the grandson of William Zeppeli, the mentor figure of Jonathan Joestar. Caesar, much like Joseph, has a strong personality and skill in using the power of Hamon. Joseph and Caesar go to where another pillar just like Santana's exist and the pillar that is the origin of the vampire-creating masks. In there, Joseph, Speedwagon and Caesar see a horrifying scene as a group of soldiers was turned to nothing but skin and their hands tied together and a friend of Caesar that was working in the army being split in two, all done by a pillar man, Whamuu. Right when Joseph and Caesar enter the cave, Whamuu goes to the pillar to revive two of his masters that are beings just like him, Kars and Esidisi. This turn of events lead to by far the most tense moment in the animated series that I've seen as Caesar and Joseph take on not just one, not just two, but three superhuman pillar men. It was absolutely crazy to witness and it felt insane.

 Santana, Whamuu, Esidisi and Kars are the pillar men villains of part 2 and the story is spent in training and trying to defeat them. None of them are particularly inspiring characters but they serve a completely different type of purpose with their presence. The final fight is, in my opinion, not that great but it still managed to do alot of crazy things as you could expect from it.
JoJo's biggest draw for me is its ability to create crazy, balls to the walls, wall of china-sized challenges for the main characters to surpass. Battle Tendency was the best at showing this and used it perfectly. The opening of part 2, "Bloody Stream" by Coda is my favourite of the 4 openings and I'd rate it equal to part 1's opening as far as objective ratings of easter eggs inside it go. I'll give JoJo part 2 the rating of  9/10. Better writing, clever and intense fights, the scale of the story was bigger and it had way better and more memorable characters than Phantom Blood. Battle Tendency was a damn good watch honestly.

JoJo's Phantom Blood

 "May fortune shine on future you bring
   ~The fate of that blood~
 JOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOJO!!!!!!"
Destiny of That Blood - TOMMY



Last month I finished watching a series that I've known of for many years now and with Diamond is Unbreakable coming up and all the hype surrounding it, I decided to tell my thoughts on what I've seen so far. The series, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (JoJo no Kimyou na Bouken by Hirohiko Araki) is well known for having a cast of muscular men doing fabulous-looking poses while in tight and serious situations, is an animated series adapted from a comic book series (started in 1986)  of the same name by the animation studio David Production. There are older versions from other studios but I didn't watch those in particular.
 JoJo's Bizarre Adventure tells us a story that spans throughout generation after generation and the story of those generation's main characters is told in their own "parts" that the overall story is split into. In each part the main characters share two identical things in particular; they have the nickname JoJo and they have the Joestar bloodline. I mainly wanted to talk about normal novels instead of graphic novels in this blog, but JoJo gave me alot of inspiration on how to build up tense situations and how a story can always become better and perfected with experience, and in some parts worse.

I decided to split each part to a separate post as I need to figure out something to say for Stardust Crusaders...


JoJo's Bizarre Adventure part 1: Phantom Blood

JoJo part 1 spans the first 9 episodes of season 1 of JoJo (2012). It sets up the groundwork for later parts and introduces us to an overarching villain whose presence in the story doesn't waver even when he's buried in the sea for a century, and ofcourse we're introduced to the Joestar family. The original JoJo and the main character of part 1 is known as Jonathan Joestar. Jonathan comes from a wealthy family and is a prideful person with a great father. The other side of the coin of the story belongs to a characters called Dio Brando, whose father is a drunkard, jobless bum and who dies in the beginning of the story, giving Dio a letter that lets him join the Joestar family if he were to die as Dio's father "saved" Jonathan's father in the past. The first three episodes of the nine that belong to part one of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure are spent in fleshing out the rivalry between JoJo and Dio. After certain events happen, the last six or so episodes are spent in running after Dio who had become massively more powerful than before. The hunt is very bloody and basic shounen-esq that might make you rip your hair off if you hate that type of thing.

Phantom Blood is definitely a very average and a cheesy series overall that feels like a cheap college movie they churn out constantly these days. I felt like it was hard to watch at times, but never did I think it was bad in any way. Aside from the great presentation, it simply used alot of ideas that aren't really anything but cliches these days. The reason for this is because it's done almost 30 years ago. Phantom Blood is definitely a 5/10 in my book when I compare it to other [better] works of fiction in this current era we live in, but in the 1980's the plot wasn't as old in the world because we didn't get information on writing styles and other such things in the blink of an eye like we do these days, so JoJo part 1 seems to me like an experimental work from a guy that wanted to create something original (nigh impossible nowadays if not completely, in my opinion). The opening of part 1 is great, and it condenses the story and shows subtle hints just like all 4 openings for JoJo, that were made by David Production atleast, do. Overall part 1 looked pretty stunning, the artwork was consistently great and Araki's style is very appealing in this modern era of sameface. The ending song and video is also great and it's used perfectly to set the mood up for the next episode. The ending song has also become a world-wide meme, #tobecontinued.

In the Name and Blood

“Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.”
Walden by Henry David Thoreau

After going through the first three seasons of Criminal Minds episodes once again, I stopped to think about something after seeing the title name for episode 3 of season 3 called "In Name and Blood." Around this time last year I read a book by a famous finnish crime fiction writer Ilkka Remes called In the Name and the Blood. Since I figured that the story of the book fits the mood for the season, with winter being almost over in most parts of the world already, I'd decided to finally talk about something in a blog.

After writing this so called review down, I noticed that I was talking alot more about the negative aspects of the story rather than the positives as I couldn't remember much of anything else, so if you're a die hard (half of a pun) fan of Remes, be warned.

Ilkka Remes is known for his writing style of adding international themes to his stories, which is true with this book also. The story is split into two parts; a murder case that's going on in Finland to what seems to be a "24" or "Die Hard" type of side story or a subplot in other countries, in this book there was only one main country linked to the story aside from Finland, which was Irak if my memory serves me correctly. I personally thought the way the two stories were weaved together was particularly poorly written. The story ends in a somewhat fanfictiony way that made me feel like I was wasting my time in the end. Around half of the ~460 pages of the book was, in my opinion, completely wasted on this international side story, making the read feel more frustrating than what it actually was (for the readers- I'm talking about the way the, what I'll call the Pandora's Box of the story, was handled with in the ending parts of the story, the part in the church).The climax of the book was very lackluster also as the reveal of the culprit was done in a rather calm manner and everything was resolved peacefully. None of the characters were particularly inspiring, fleshed out, had any interesting or memorable names or quirks or were developed in a decent way. No, they were normal people you'll see anywhere on most of the average TV-shows which In the Name and the Blood sort of did feel like with the way it presented its characters which is why I don't talk about the main character of the story, crime inspector Johanna Vahtera, that is. Anyways, some will appreciate the lifelessness (as in lack of outstanding personalities etc. for the characters), some won't. I guess it's one of the draws of Remes's writing style but I didn't really like it myself.

To change the mood from negative to positive for a second, I thought the book was well written in a way that it never felt boring or dragging when I tried to get into the story. It was well over 400 pages, four times longer than another novel I read just recently, but alot more entertaining. I can't recall actually wanting the story to end because of it being dragged or anything, it was more about the frustratement from reading a long, somewhat poorly but still entertainingly written side story that ultimately felt like filler to make the book longer. So the entertainment value was definitely there.

Back to the negative aspects as time didn't gold my memories of this one for some reason. My main problem with the book is that the first five pages were written in a very hard-boiled fashion, with the characters going out to illegal hunting in the darkness of a winter night and slitting the throat of, if I remember right, a deer to get the blood from it and even taking that with them for some blood pastries later. The beginning felt like false advertising by the end of the book. It wasn't completely opposite with rainbows and sunshines or anything, but the writing style was something you'd find in most mass-producted stories I'd say. The [cold and sort of "fresh"] atmosphere after the first five pages was gone until the second murder about halfway through the story where the culprit gets away, where I got that feeling of dread and chilliness once more, but even so, now that I think about it, the murders were very uninspired and left open. It felt like Remes didn't feel like taking any risks, which is good if you want to avoid plot holes in your story, sure, but disappointing nevertheless.
 I'm not a veteran when it comes to mystery-crime-detective fiction, but I still felt like the story overall was just average. As in 5,5/10 average. +Extra .5 to the 5 for the entertainment value and a bit of smoothness with how the plot that was going on in Finland played out for a good chunk of that half of the story.

If you're interested in stories that don't require using your brain and just want to have an entertaining time, without having to deal with the author trying to write what may potentially be a complex, messy and pretentious story, go for it (Pia in her 10 year old blog post over here seems to agree with me on this matter of pretentiousness in some ways). Maybe you'll get a different type of feel to the story than I did.