The following piece may contain spoilers of one of Stephen King’s books. Viewer discretion is advised.

In early June, Stephen King (also known as the “Master of Horror” because almost all his books are about horror, suspense, and thriller) put a finish line to the Bill Hodges Trilogy with the release of the third and last book: End of Watch, which followed Mr. Mercedes and Finders Keepers. All three books were enjoyable, you’ll never get bored while reading it.

Mr. Mercedes was published on June 3, 2014. The book will mark the beginning of an exciting journey. Mr. Mercedes focuses on the crime that Brady Hartsfield committed at a job fair with a Mercedes Benz and Hartsfield’s maddening family. Bill Hodges, Jerome Robinson, and Holly Gibneys (The Mercedes Benz’s owner’s cousin) try to figure out Brady’s next moves to avoid another catastrophe.

The second book, Finders Keepers, which was published on June 2, 2015, is about a separate case that the Finders Keepers organization (run by Hodges and Holly) try to solve with a little bit of help from Jerome. The case makes a connection between a murder of a famous author in 1978 to the present (2010 in the book).

At the end of this book, Hartsfield seems to be brain dead, but this doesn’t means he’s done chasing Hodges. End of Watch, published on June 7, 2016, talks about the last plan of Hartsfield (now also referred as The Suicide Prince, which was the original name of the last book) to kill people by suicide through a technological device, which has a lot of games including one that has an illusion. As always, the Finder Keepers crew try to figure out what’s up with him and stop him before he does his thing again.

I really loved the series and it was a great pleasure reading it. Even though the books are fiction, I liked King’s use of realistic stuff like the guns used by Mr. Hodges, or the places the characters were (at least they sound real). The suspense was another trait I enjoyed. In a book, you need to carefully read word by word so you don’t miss anything that will happen later on, and while reading the series, the suspense will kill you! As soon as you know something intriguing, you would want to skim the pages and see what happens at the end, but you can’t do that! You’ll skip so many details while you skim, for example what are the attacks they used to stop Hartsfield? Or who is being affected by one of Hartsfield’s plans and what does he has to do with any of the characters?

Bill Hodges Trilogy is a really good horror, and suspense series. I would like to get a lot of people into it, so I can share reactions and emotions with them!

Saman Khan

High School for Dual Language and Asian Studies held its 10^th annual talent show on Friday, April 22. The talent show is a great opportunity for students to show off their skills and talent, but it’s not very entertaining and can get quite boring for students.

For the past years the school tends to have a few talented performers but some are not so good. Students still cheer as loudly as possible just for fun.

“I just really love the singers in our school, but some singers last year were ehh… let’s just say they were a little bit off key and that was the part that bored me to death,” Tiberius Saint Louis an 11^th grader, says. Some students like him don’t find some performances very entertaining.

The students from China every year act in different plays. Last year it was “A Midsummer’s Night Dream” and most of the students thought the performance was pointlessly long  and boring. “I literally couldn’t hear a word the actors were saying and the play was way too long, it took up half of the talent show time!” Janice Chen a 10^th grader says.

Some other students came to the performance just for the heck of it — not because they were actually interested. “Honestly … I just came to see the talent show because I don’t want to stay in class and I really don’t care whether the performances were good or not but the magician was not entertaining at all,” Athena Tozzo an 11^th grader says.

Nicole who sang “Halo” in last year’s talent show, students participating in the lion dance and Tianyan and Lishi playing the violin were the most talented performers in my opinion and as well as a few other’s opinions. “Nicole’s voice really blew me away, she really knows how to hit those high notes just like Beyonce,” Pema Yangchen, a 10^th grader ,says.

The way the students memorized the 10-minute-long dance is outstanding! It requires a lot of practice daily to have a perfectly memorized performance. And the two girls playing the violin, Lishi and Tianyan perfectly played the instrument, with a smooth and soft rhythm.

Overall, the performances were well-played and some entertaining but some were not very entertaining due to the way they played their performance and the duration of some performances were too long for students to pay attention to.