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| 1447235029
| 3.49
| 1,293
| Jan 01, 2014
| Aug 28, 2014
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!!!!!!! THIS REVIEW MAY HAVE SOME SPOILERS. I normally don't spoiler-hide my reviews or even warn for them, but there is some mystery/suspense in this !!!!!!! THIS REVIEW MAY HAVE SOME SPOILERS. I normally don't spoiler-hide my reviews or even warn for them, but there is some mystery/suspense in this novel, so be warned. !!!!!! Why I read it: I like mystery & suspense. Thoughts: Terrible. Goes to the Donate pile as soon as I've posted this review. Here is the plot in a nutshell: Hannah and Will lived in London up to the start of the novel. Hannah and Will can't have children. After dealing with that (tests + multiple rounds of IVF) for a while, prior to the start of the novel, they decide to adopt. They nearly get to adopt a little boy, but at the last second another family gets him. Hannah, who used to work for a charity and travelled/worked in war-torn countries, suddenly loses every single marble she was ever born with and fixates on impressing a social worker so much that she and Will buy a rundown manor house in Suffolk and move into it with two weeks to spare before the social worker is due to visit them again. Why she thinks this will fix things, I don't know. By all accounts, she and Will didn't do anything wrong when it came to the first adoption, and even prior to them up and moving to Suffolk, they had been approved for an adoption and they were simply waiting for an opportunity to come up. So anyway, there they are, in Suffolk. The manor is old and needs a lot of repairs. Hannah has a renovation/redecoration schedule, which is basically just making sure the house has basic amenities (phone, water, power, internet) and slapping on a fresh coat of paint on every surface without going to any real depth. They paint over wallpaper, and in the kitchen they just paint over the cabinetry and don't clean the insides (described as dirty and greasy in Hannah's POV chapter). Hannah and Will are also going through Marital Issues™. Hannah is ultra-obsessed with getting Barbara, the social worker, to love her and the new house, to the point where it's an all-consuming fixation and I would say she needs not a crumbling manor to fix up, but mental health help. Will is super bummed out that Hannah doesn't want to have sex, which seemed selfish at first, but then it turns out she also flinches away when he just touches her or shows any other sign of physical affection, so I did feel a little bad for him. But only a very small amount, because he's a fucking prat. As for why Hannah thinks fixing up the manor in only the most superficial ways is enough to prove to social services that they're responsible adults with a completely safe home... who knows? The plot demands this, so she does it. Two days after they move into the house, Will goes back to London (he still has to commute there for work until they set up his studio in the garage) and there is a massive snowstorm that blocks off the country and when it turns out he can't return home, he feels very relieved about not having to deal with Hannah's bullshit for a while. He then proceeds to drink himself silly and nearly have an affair with a coworker, all the while whingeing to himself about how Hannah used to be much cooler, braver, tougher, better, when she did all her NGO work, and now she's just terrible and he doesn't want to deal with her anymore. In the meantime, weird shit is going on back at the house, and Hannah is all by herself. Her neighbours are either creepy AF or downright threatening, and the secret at the core of this book is that the people who used to own Hannah's new house basically took in an illiterate pregnant teenager and then manipulated her into staying as their servant forever, and then also kept her children in servitude for themselves and their neighbours. Every time a neighbour starts to figure out what's going on with the "help" they get cut into the deal and get to use them as well. It's really, really gross. And then Hannah and Will move in and while Will is away, Hannah not only has to deal with a bunch of terrible people as her neighbours, but she also gets to meet "Elvie", the current generation of illiterate house servant, and sniffs out that there is a mystery surrounding her house (and Elvie), and the more she digs, the more her neighbours turn on her and try to gaslight her. As a group, they successfully convince Will that Hannah cheated on him, to which I have to say: clearly he wanted out of the marriage, if he really believed his currently-sex-averse wife would just cheat on him with a stranger. The solution to the mystery is interesting at first, while it starts to take shape in the novel, but it takes so damned long for the mystery to even show up in the first place. By the time Hannah finally starts to feel something is terribly off, the reader has spent a lot of time with her and Will, and they're both so fucking unbearable. She's obsessed with Barbara and her decorating plans (which are incredibly tedious to read about), and Will just reads like an absolute scumbag. The real mystery only shows up after Will has had a lot thoughts about how much Hannah sucks now and how trapped he feels with her and how he only agreed to buy the house in Suffolk because she wanted it and she was so depressed after losing the potential adoption that he wanted to fix it for her and blah blah blah. He blames himself not nearly as much as he blames her and it's insufferable. He also gets drunk/high with his coworker and they get emotionally and physically close and she kisses him and he lets her and then he runs off and he's somewhat wracked with guilt, but he also never tells Hannah about it. After his strange neighbours convince him that Hannah cheated on him, he abandons her again and he goes to hang out in London with his work acquaintance, not physically cheating but definitely kind of emotionally cheating on Hannah, in a childish, spiteful sort of way. Meanwhile, Hannah's neighbours show up at her house, threaten her, and then eventually actually kidnap her and take her off to be drowned off the coast somewhere, because she's asking too many questions. I would say that from this point on, the book rushes to its conclusion, but honestly, this was doomed from the start: 1. The set-up took too damned long. 2. Hannah and Will are boring. Hannah's past job and Will's wild youth are mentioned over and over again until I was sick of them, and it was only because the characters were stale lumps who had nothing else going for them, so the author always brought up those two things to fill the dead air. 3. I couldn't make myself believe that any person is as gullible as Hannah is, especially when she's allegedly been in a lot of tough spots and met a lot of intimidating, dangerous people. Your gruff, temperamental, really strange neighbour just barges into your house and starts "helping" you (i.e. treating you like a servant and getting you to make him endless tea while he puts up your shelves), or he "gives you a lift to the coast" (i.e. basically kidnaps you and takes you off to help him to physical labour for the day) and you just shrug it off like, "I guess this is countryside hospitality"????? 4. Most of the solution to the mystery is delivered to Hannah via explanatory email, and she's still like, "Huh? I don't get it??"... 5. ...and then later a man has to explain it for her all over again. I've read plenty of mysteries that were just "meh" rather than suspenseful or mysterious, but a novel that spends most of its time chasing its own tail and then delivers the full solution via expository dialogue in the last handful of pages is not a mystery novel. 6. After all that... after Hannah nearly gets drowned and Elvie rescues her and they get chased back to the house and they hide in a weird under-floor recess and then she has to sneak into a taxi and make her own way to London in the middle of the night, having just escaped being murdered after her husband abandoned her in the countryside, you're telling me that not only Hannah still gave Will an ultimatum, but that they actually reconciled and went on to adopt a child?? I would've crawled back to London on my hands and knees just to kill my husband with my own two hands, never mind adopting a child with him!! Would I read more from this author: After this? No. Would I recommend it: No. ...more |
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| 0375703764
| 4.09
| 177,616
| May 07, 2000
| Mar 07, 2000
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Why I read it: Re-read. First read this in 2016 at the recommendation of a pal (tumblr user starkdisassembled, I salute you). Then got rid of it in a
Why I read it: Re-read. First read this in 2016 at the recommendation of a pal (tumblr user starkdisassembled, I salute you). Then got rid of it in a house move, and then suddenly this year, I felt like I wanted to re-engage with it. Thoughts: In another life, on another goodreads account, I said "I can't even begin to review this book. I don't even know how to write about it. I don't know how to talk about it." That's still true. There is just too much in this one book for me to be able to talk about it in any sort of coherent way. There are too many angles for me to look at it from. I could talk about the fiction and metafiction of it, the book as a physical construct, signs and symbols and how we make meaning, the mystery at the core of the book, whether the key is in one of the three narratives or in the appendixes (personally I think Yggdrasil is the key I'm most comfortable with and capable of thinking about, but I'm also fascinated by the role of the minotaur and also while we're at it another angle to look at it from is the way the narrative tries to cast characters into roles [Jacob and Esau, hunters and gatherers]), authorship and ownership, murder and salvation and redemption, and the act of creation itself. A lot of philosophy and art is quoted in the book, and all of it feels pointed, even when one character suggests another characters has no clue what he's talking about. It takes so much thought and skill to get your story into a shape like that, where it reads like bullshit sometimes but that's (I assume) its intended effect, and all of it feels effortless in the end. All that to say: I wish I was as well-read as Mark Z. Danielewski. Would I read more from this author: Honestly, no. I've thought about it, but looking at The Familiar, I'm happy to leave our relationship where it is now. Would I recommend it: Yes. ...more |
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Sep 20, 2024
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| 9781473215313
| 1473215315
| 3.13
| 564
| Jan 16, 2014
| May 12, 2016
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Why I read it: Recently, I've watched The Island at the Top of the World, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Third Man on the Mountain, and Journey to the
Why I read it: Recently, I've watched The Island at the Top of the World, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Third Man on the Mountain, and Journey to the Center of the Earth. It's safe to say I've been on a little adventure kick, especially of the old-school kind, mountaineering, exploration... back when the world was bigger and there was more in it. This book has been on my to-read list since I bought it for a whole $5, which is a pretty steep discount from $22.99, and the back cover plot summary seemed right up my alley. Thoughts: Where The Paleontologist was advertised as Michael Crichton + Night at the Museum + Stephen King and failed each of those aspects, Twenty Trillion Leagues Under the Sea was Jules Verne + Event Horizon, H.P. Lovecraft + H.G. Wells + A Voyage to Arcturus, and as far as my experience with each of those things goes, it was very much like them: easy to get into at the start, getting progressively more difficult to swallow towards the middle, then proceeding vertiginously to an ending that makes me go "Oh........ huh." Obviously the real question is, did I get what I hoped out of this book, and the answer is that I actually got more than I hoped. The main thing I struggled with was that there were a lot of unlikeable characters behaving irrationally, and just as it was getting good and Lebret's ulterior motives were about to be revealed, Billiard-Fanon pops him and the sub (honestly, who shoots a gun in a submarine). Then there was an annoying section of Billiard-Fanon losing whatever marbles he had left, and I really thought the rest of the novel was going to be a slog. Of the characters who were left, maybe only Jhutti would have still been willing to learn more of the world the Plongeur was now in, and with the religious mania suddenly overtaking the remaining crew, I wasn't feeling too optimistic. But then the novel switched back to Lebret's POV and I was so happy, particularly when strange things simply continued to happen to him, so I got the exploration of the strange watery universe I wanted all along. This latter part of the book is probably my favourite, because I didn't know what to expect at any point. Each new development and explanation for what was going on was more WTF than the previous. It made for very tense reading, and suddenly the amount of book I had left was rapidly decreasing. The discussions of class and race and political affiliation seemed very Vernian to me, and, of course, Prince Dakkar himself is Captain Nemo, meeting yet another tragic ending. The (pseudo?)scientific concepts of universes within universes, each ruled and peopled by incredible entities, was very Voyage to Arcturus, but better simply by virtue of fact that I didn't have to suffer through the protagonists actually visiting all those worlds and meeting all those entities in this one story. This story was a decently-paced exploration of one realm; if Voyage to Arcturus would have been a decently-paced exploration of Tormance, it would've had to have been at least three times longer. The ending was strange, but perfectly fitting. Would I read more from this author: Yes!! As soon as I finished this book, I looked him up and saw he has written a fair bit, and of the novels that have wikipedia articles, at least one or two are also right up my alley as far as surface elements go (Splinter, for one, is also a Verne homage, and The Snow seems like an outright scifi version of Private Rites, but replace water with snow). Would I recommend it: Sure! ...more |
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| B07DN1684W
| 3.77
| 465
| unknown
| Jun 09, 2018
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Why I read it: There is a 2023 French film adaptation of this novella. I watched it late at night a couple of weeks ago and fell in love. Now it's eas
Why I read it: There is a 2023 French film adaptation of this novella. I watched it late at night a couple of weeks ago and fell in love. Now it's easily in my top 10 all-time movies. I think about it a lot, about the peace and darkness of the countryside, the horror of loving someone who can bring you death by loving you and the way that can be literal or figurative, depending on your frame of mind. Thought I'd check out the story that inspired it. Thoughts: Really briefly, because it's very very short: the story is okay, the translation and proofreading and typesetting were rubbish. Overall, this is a case where the adaptation really is an improvement on the original while being faithful to it at the same time. ...more |
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Aug 02, 2024
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| 0008479453
| 9780008479459
| 0008479453
| 3.64
| 44,324
| Aug 02, 2022
| Oct 05, 2022
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Why I read it: The blurb sounded good! It describes how in the UK there are six families of creatures who literally eat books to live, and ends with "
Why I read it: The blurb sounded good! It describes how in the UK there are six families of creatures who literally eat books to live, and ends with "This is a story of escape, a mother’s savage devotion and a queer love that will electrify readers looking for something beguiling, thrilling, strange and new." Doesn't that sound good? Thoughts: It was... not good. Here are some thoughts I had on various topics throughout the novel. 1. There was a lot of info dumping in the first 30 or so pages. I felt as if I had been sat down in a classroom with a projector and given a briefing on the setting/conceit of the novel, rather than being allowed to discover it at a more natural pace. There were further info dumps later. Some bits of information were repeated several times, while others got a cursory mention and then were never brought up again. 2. There was a Romania mention. I don't know why the author picked Romania as the Fairweather family's point of origin, as there was nothing particularly Romanian about them. Devon's "Romanian dress" is mentioned several times, I think it's the dress she gets married in the two times she gets married, but no details are ever given about the actual dress, so I have no idea what made it Romanian -- was it a traditional dress (which can vary wildly between "very plain" and "very complicated and richly detailed" depending on the region it comes from) or was it just any random dress that was made in Romania? They certainly are never seen or heard to be speaking Romanian, nor are any references made beyond Christmas celebrations "in the Romanian tradition" (again, which tradition?). Book eaters are also all named for places because allegedly they have no imagination, and if the author wanted to stick to this whole Romania nonsense, she could have easily named the Fairweathers for Romanian places. 3. I hated Cai, Devon's son. Just hated him. He's a five-year-old who can only eat people's minds, rather than books, which means he absorbs all of their knowledge, and the personalities of the people he eats sort of overtake his own personality for a while after feeding. This was basically an excuse to write him as an adult in a five-year-old's body. He spent most of the book alternating between playing on his Game Boy and speechifying in an absolutely ridiculous way. Whenever he spoke, I felt like I was reading one of these "woke toddler" memes and simply couldn't take him seriously. It also just gets worse the more you think about it. The first person he eats is his own father, and quickly after that he's given an infant to snack on, ostensibly because it would wipe his memories/personality of his father's, but early in the book (some years after he eats his father's brain) he heavily hints at having intimate knowledge of his own mother and how his father basically abused her, which is, like, why. I get the drama of it all, but there were so many other choices the author could've made before reaching this point. 4. The way some of the families lived caused some dramatic tonal shifts between chapters, and even within the same chapter sometimes. The Fairweathers live like they're in an Emily Bronte novel: their children are all free-range, barefoot and in rough and tumble clothes, roaming the woods and whatnot at their leisure, like stray urchins. But they also seem to have shiny new cars. The Winterfields are opulently rich. The Easterbrooks live modern lives with modern appliances, and also employ literal slave labour in their fields. The Ravenscars currently operate a brewery and they're also the book eater equivalent of Big Pharma. The switch between Devon sometimes being abed like a sickly Victorian wife and being treated by everyone like she was Bertha Mason, and then going off to play Tomb Raider/Crash Bandicoot/Final Fantasy with her new BFF was so jarring and surreal. 5. This is kind of an addendum to the previous point but it can stand on its own: it's mentioned so many times that there are very few "breedable" book eater women (their reproductive systems fail in their early to mid-20s, after they pop out two babies, maybe three, and then they're infertile), so the big six families carefully arrange marriages and trade the fertile women amongst each other so as to not inbreed too much. It's also mentioned many times that they're forced to do this in the UK because the world is no longer as easy to travel through without proper documentation. This is complete and utter bullshit. These are all really old families, basically local aristocracy in their respective regions, and they all seem to have a line of business. The Fairweathers have a law firm, the Easterbrooks are into farming, and the Ravenscars are compounding drugs. Most of them also seem to live in relative luxury. Yes, the Fairweathers are said to be on the verge of being broke, but the others are prospering. You're telling me that none of the other families can put a few thousand pounds together and find a way to get fake IDs? They all have fancy new cars and motorcycles -- who buys these, with what papers, or is there a string of mysterious luxury vehicle thefts throughout Yorkshire??? 6. There's a lot of repetitive language used by paper-thin characters. Inside jokes are repeated ad nauseam. If I've read "fitted with a surgically implanted explosive device" once, I must've read it fifty time. 7. Each chapter is headed by an epigraph which basically tells you what the chapter is about, which I would've thought would preclude the need for a chapter title as well. Some of the epigraphs are actual quotes from books, and some of them are quotes from a in-universe book about book eaters, written by a human who has observed them for several decades. From these quotes, I was given to understand that book eaters think they were created by an alien being called the Collector, for ??? reason, and then put on Earth for ??? reason, and then at some point the Collector will return and collect them because ???. The author of those quotes wonders whether the book eaters are magic or aliens. And, like... are they? Or not? I really wish the book would've gone into that some more, because that was actually interesting. I think they also say at some point that they don't believe in God, but some of them still celebrate Christmas, and they still say stuff like "oh my god", which I know isn't an indicative of religion, but it still felt weird for potential aliens who believe in the Collector to say. The human character also says "oh God" a few pages after he says "by the gods" or something like that, which, again: weird and inconsistent. 8. Queer rep was abysmal lol. The blurb specifically mentions "a queer love that will electrify readers" and it was... not that. Sure, it was queer. There were queer characters (even an explicitly asexual character, who is mocked by his brother for it, which I did not enjoy). Love, though? We're talking about characters who had just met, who had deliberately misled each other, who barely knew each other, and who were barely on equal footing and beginning to trust each other at the very end of the book. Devon's romantic interest, Hester, was also barely there, as far as I'm concerned, and when she was, she was just there to sort of look pretty and occasionally further the plot. 9. Neurodivergent rep was interesting. I think Cai is explicitly meant to be read as ND, but a case could be made for a lot of the other characters, as well. However, it's so tangled up in what it means to be a book eater vs a mind eater, that I can't really judge this point. 10. The inter-house political intrigue/drama was supremely uninteresting because it all hinged on keeping what's basically a mafia-like cult of abusers and rapists going, so I cared about none of that. Would I read more: Not really. Would I recommend it: Not really. ...more |
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Jul 21, 2024
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Jul 21, 2024
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Jul 21, 2024
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| 0008265380
| 9780008265380
| 0008265380
| 3.58
| 92
| 1880
| Oct 16, 2018
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Why I read it: Bought it because I like weird fiction and short stories. Read it because of those same reasons. Thoughts: I really liked this collectio Why I read it: Bought it because I like weird fiction and short stories. Read it because of those same reasons. Thoughts: I really liked this collection, and I can see these authors' influence on suspense, horror and weird fiction. The language in translation is very... old-timey, shall we say, but that does some of the heavy lifting to match the tone and feel of the stories to the 1800s. The stories themselves do the rest of the heavy lifting, especially the ones that involve any modicum of science and philosophy, since they veer directly into bogus mad science. Anyway, my edition of this collection had 16 stories (I gather there is a 17th one in another edition?), which feels like a decent number when you think about it, and felt downright endless as I was reading them. In the manner of folktales, the stories were all relatively short and to the point, and yet seemed to belabour the various points so much, that the chilling effect you might otherwise get from the stories is nearly lost. Anyway, all that to say this: all the stories in this collection are downright strange. My favourite thing about them is actually that they're all so strange. Almost all of them are told in the first person from the perspective of a narrator who has gone through some weird shit, or the perspective of a narrator being told a story by someone who has gone through some weird shit. Sometimes, the narrator and the person telling him a story both go through weird shit. A lot of them are unexplained, and end abruptly, which is a feature I actually like. My all-time favourite short story is the fragment at the end of this page, and ever since I read that in uni, I've been chasing the strange thrill I get from an inexplicable story that ends just as it's getting good, making me seek my own climax, as it were. Some of the Erckmann-Chatrian stories do that. The Owl's Ear specifically ends with "I was so spooked by this incident that I left this town and I'm never going back again". The downside is always that if the stories don't hit the right notes throughout, these abrupt endings just make them feel unfinished, so I guess there's a balance to be struck and not all of the stories get there. The best story by far as The Wolf-Man. It had all the elements of form and style -- the mystery, the suspense, the Black Forest castle setting, a cast of interesting characters (and surprisingly well-realised, for a short story), the triumph of good and hope over an ancient curse -- and delivered a really gripping story that I'm so glad was saved for last. Would I read more: These authors' stories are apparently not really sought after in translation but I would read more of their stories and more old stories like these ones. Would I recommend it: Are you into folklore and/or weird fiction? Then by all means. ...more |
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Jul 19, 2024
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| 0553804715
| 9780553804713
| 0553804715
| 3.98
| 2,756
| 2007
| Aug 28, 2007
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Why I read it: I bought a Hellboy collection recently and while looking at a list of Mike Mignola's works I saw this title. Not gonna lie, I saw the w
Why I read it: I bought a Hellboy collection recently and while looking at a list of Mike Mignola's works I saw this title. Not gonna lie, I saw the word "vampire" and my eyes just zoomed in like a camera. Thoughts: I liked it! For the most part, I'd even say I loved it! It kind of fell apart a little bit at the end but, as a whole, it's a neat little gothic tale with some really cool illustrations. Downsides: Getting these out first. The biggest issue I have with the story is a it's-not-you-it's-me type of thing: late in the story, when Baltimore goes into the crypt and right at the end, when he finally defeats his nemesis, there are what I can only call action sequences. I imagine they'd look great in a movie, in animation, or even in comic book panels. But one of my personal failings when reading is that I simply cannot picture big shootouts or swordfights or hand-to-hand combat scenes in my head. I guess there are many things I can't just picture out of the blue, but usually I have enough of a frame of reference to picture something like the thing I'm reading. Reading action/fight sequences still sucks, though. I always end up picturing The Matrix (still the pinnacle of action, 25 years later), and that doesn't always work. The other downside is that the Romanian in this is absolutely hilarious. First of all, I can't find any towns named Korzha in Romania. From a linguistic perspective, "k" and "zh" are not a thing in Romanian so that would make it a very unusual and notable town name, but, y'know, I'll make allowances for a period piece set close after WWI. Romania looked slightly different then, so maybe it's meant to be in Moldova, which would have been part of Greater Romania up to 1940. That would fit with Baltimore being on his way to Odessa, as well, I guess. There's also brief dialogue in Romanian, and it's wonky. It's couldn't-afford-or-didn't-want-to-get-a-translator wonky. It's Google Translate wonky. But it's understandable: this came out in 2007. What did we use in 2007 for on-the-fly translations? Babelfish? I'm pretty sure I used Babelfish, and it was not great. Then there is the dead girl's name. Her name is Mircea. Mircea is exclusively masculine as a first name and it has always been that way, and I can't imagine this name was ever on a "old timey Romanian girls' names" list, so it's just... inexplicable. Funny as fuck, though. Later, Baltimore someone refers to a vampire collaborator as a "bazaconie", which doesn't even make sense. A "bazaconie" is like... something weird/strange but with a funny bend, like seeing an actual dog with covrigi on its tail (a Romanian idiom to indicate an idyllic place of wealth) and going "Well, isn't that something!" Something bizarre, a shenanigan, some small mischief. "The town priest who sold the church to a vampire in return for a mystery box of coins and teeth and spiders, leading to the church being desecrated and made into a vampire lair" is not a bazaconie - it's not even a word you would use to describe another human being! But the real kicker is this bit: "Judas!" I called him. "Traducător!" In context, this is Baltimore calling the priest a traitor, hence calling him Judas. The problem is that "traducător" means "translator". It's baffling. The only way I can explain it is that the word search at the time somehow yielded the old "traduttore, traditore" maxim and they just used the wrong part of that, but even that is a stretch. Either way, the inaccuracies piled on and it kind of broke the spell of that entire section. Upsides: Other than the issues I mentioned above, this was actually very good. I really, really enjoyed the conceit of most of the book being stories three men tell about an absent fourth man. The frame narrative of the stories-within-stories really worked. It also helped that the stories were all wildly different and strange. My favourite was the sailor's story about the town of Cicagne (love me some cursed towns and ruins, mmm), but the lake monster is a veeery close second, just for the absolute creepiness of it. The bear from the first story made for a very good first monster. I really like that this whole chain of events -- vampires, the plague -- happens because of WWI. I like that war makes monsters, figuratively and literally. I like that the monsters were just monsters eating corpses until Baltimore made it personal by awakening Haigus (which is a name I've picked up from the wiki article, because I'm not sure it's ever actually mentioned in the book). I like that Haigus haunts Baltimore through the rest of his time on the front, then at home, and then just goes too far and Baltimore becomes the hunter. Despite its issues with the Romanian language, I also really liked the dramatic images of that segment of the story -- the unhallowed church, the empty graves, a vampire (in the guise of a lord) willing to deal with Baltimore, trade information for safety. I also think the ending was perfect. A little sad, sure, that Baltimore doesn't meet his end when it's clear it's the outcome he wanted from meeting his maker, but the Red King turning his gaze directly upon Baltimore, at long last, was exactly what this gothic story needed. Would I read more: I've picked up the comics as well, and I'm curious whether there's further hints as to the nature of the vampires and the Red King. Would I recommend it: Yeah. ...more |
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| unknown
| 3.73
| 596
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| unknown
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Why I read it: Swamp Thing... you make my heart sing... Thoughts: I thought this story sounded interesting (it's the end of the world and no one but Sw Why I read it: Swamp Thing... you make my heart sing... Thoughts: I thought this story sounded interesting (it's the end of the world and no one but Swamp Thing can save the last survivors) and the cover looked awesome so... y'know... of course I got it. As usual, upsides and downsides. Downsides: This is a self-contained story, but I definitely felt like I could have benefited from having more knowledge beforehand. Luckily I know about John Constantine and also vaguely knew about Tefé Holland, or I would've been completely lost. Animal Woman and Boston, though? No clue. The Parliaments... no idea if they are explained elsewhere, in other parts of the Swamp Thing lore. I knew about the Green, I kind of figured out from context what the Red is. But there's a third one (Rot?) and... yeah. I dunno. I also didn't particularly care about the last survivors. The way the protagonist little girl was drawn reminded me way too much of artists who can't draw children so they sort of draw miniature adults (looking at you, Hirohiko Araki) and it was kind of off-putting. The human drama was boring, too, nothing I haven't seen elsewhere. Whenever the story went back to the survivors, I just wanted Constantine back. Upsides: Great art. Other than the little girl, the whole of everything else was beautiful. The cast of uber-people (Swamp Thing, Constantine, Deadman, Animal Woman, even the demon Constantine bargains with) were drawn very well. Constantine stands out because he's just that cool, even as an old man who lives on a lighthouse island and drinks all day (?? how, at the end of the world??). I liked the physical and symbolic shedding of Swamp Thing's outer layers as he turns away from/is kicked out of the Green, so for a part of the story, he looks like the skeleton of what might've once been the Swamp Thing. The power boost he gets from Constantine's negotiations at the end was cool as fuck. I'd also like to own several of the variant covers as full-size posters. Who do I speak to about that. I did like the larger story of humanity at the end of the world, though I don't have much to say about it, because I don't think the writers had much to say about it either. I saw the words "eco-horror" somewhere in a blurb or in a review, but I don't think it spends enough time on that in order to qualify, and "powers that be have decreed that humanity must die so the planet can heal itself/start a new cycle of life" is kind of... been there, done that. The conclusion, as always, is simply hopeful, that humanity deserves the chance to try and turn it around somehow. And, I mean... do they? Do we? This story doesn't spend any time really considering that. I guess this also works as a downside, but the upside is that it works well enough if the goal was simply to provide a background for this adventure. Would I read more: Yeah. I like self-contained stories. Would I recommend it: Why not. ...more |
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| 1783299754
| 9781783299751
| 1783299754
| 4.16
| 1,068
| May 15, 2018
| May 15, 2018
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Why I read it: This is a re-read! Thoughts: Short review that starts a little bit like this: "Aaahh yes, I now sort of remember why I didn't really re Why I read it: This is a re-read! Thoughts: Short review that starts a little bit like this: "Aaahh yes, I now sort of remember why I didn't really read the rest of the series once I ran out of the books I had at the time." The stories all sort of run together, and even though I was present for the reading of each of them, I couldn't in all truthfulness tell you what they were each about. The one with the Christmas goose was the funniest by far; the sequences where the goose tries to escape its bindings made me laugh, especially when it dislocates its own wing in order to escape and then pops it back in in the manner of 90s action films, and Grogsson toasts to it admiringly and says "Dat bird's well hard!" which, again, just made me laugh until I was tearing up. In short, when this book is good, it's very good. It's very funny, and the jokes flow well. The cases and situations they get into are different enough from one another that every story ends up having a really good moment of utter comedic shenanigans or a moment of earnestness. The last story in the book, the the Warlock Holmes interpolation of A Scandal in Bohemia, had both: comedic shenanigans there were aplenty, especially in the second part, when Dr Watson comes up with a cunning plan that succeeds and fails on multiple levels; moments of earnestness came, unsurprisingly, from Warlock Holmes himself, who worries about Watson's fascination with Irene Adler, and keeps saying that he can see "doom" gathering on/around Watson the more he deals with the woman. Knowing Warlock Holmes, he probably sees the actual manifestation of doom. So anyway, that's nice. Good stories. The downside is this book came out in 2018, so it includes a Covfefe/orange-demon-with-white-circles-around-the-eyes joke in the Red-Headed League adaptation that immediately took me right out of the piece and kind of had me on my back foot for the rest of the story. Which is a shame, because it was a full story written from Warlock Holmes's perspective, and it included a lot of clues and hooks for future adventures, but all I could think of was "bleh". Would I read a sequel or the author's other works: I mean... still yes. However, I've found that through some trickery of fate, I don't yet own the next volume in the series even though I do have the fifth, so this series is momentarily on pause until I can get the missing piece. I'm curious about whether Watson's soul... weapon... bone needle... thing comes into play anywhere in the next stories. Would I recommend this: I mean... yeah, sure. If you're a completionist, you may as well. ...more |
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Jun 19, 2024
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| 1783299738
| 9781783299737
| 1783299738
| 4.09
| 1,651
| May 16, 2017
| May 16, 2017
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Why I read it: This is a re-read! Thoughts: Another short review -- even shorter than the first one, I think. Warlock Holmes remains a delight. Readin Why I read it: This is a re-read! Thoughts: Another short review -- even shorter than the first one, I think. Warlock Holmes remains a delight. Reading this second volume, especially Silver Blaze: Murder Horse, actually finally brought home to me why I enjoy these stories so much: they remind me of Blackadder. Silver Blaze, in particular, still makes me laugh in the same way The Shadow or Prince Ludwig the Indestructible made me laugh ("Yes! I... was one of his sheep!" still incapacitates me absolutely; I think the first time I watched that, I couldn't stop laughing for five minutes). Other stories, like The Adventure of the Solitary Tricyclist, I didn't really enjoy the first time I read them, and this second time around they were just... there. The Reigate Way to Another World also falls in the "was just there" category, but the ending is well-delivered. I guess that other than the great sense of humour and sticking the landing on jokes (which I think I've mentioned in my review for A Study in Brimstone) what this collection really has going for it is the constant hinting at Warlock Holmes's nature and the nature of his deals and dealings with the Other Powers. Just like in the first instalment of the series, that hinting and the eventual reveal of Holmes As A Youth in the last story of the volume provide the thread of seriousness and... sadness, I guess. This collection of stories started out with me feeling sad for Dr Watson, who is on corpse watch because he's had to kill Warlock but his body doesn't seem to be willing to be giving up the ghost entirely, and ended with me feeling sad for Warlock's traumatic childhood and the terrible things he's had to do to survive. He's ordinarily such a happy-go-lucky character, yet it was clear from the text that his involvement in the troubles at Baskerville Hall is one of his biggest regrets, which revealed a lot of depth to the character. I credit that to the author's skill at weaving comedy and drama together. Would I read a sequel or the author's other works: Hyup. Would I recommend this: Yeah. It might not be to everyone's taste. The slightly helter-skelter, referential humour could be a miss for some people. But I liked this series of books so much, I even made a Spotify playlist. ...more |
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| 1401220835
| 9781401220839
| 1401220835
| 4.23
| 27,744
| 1983
| Apr 10, 2012
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Why I read it: There was a recent Swamp Thing adaptation I really liked, and I've been curious about the comics ever since. Occasionally, I would look
Why I read it: There was a recent Swamp Thing adaptation I really liked, and I've been curious about the comics ever since. Occasionally, I would look it up and, undecided about where I should start reading, just give up. But I'd also see examples of artwork when looking it up, and I'd keep thinking "Man, this is beautiful... ahh, maybe next time." Well, next time finally came. Thoughts: This is a very cool story. Or rather, there are several cool stories in this volume. There are characters and subplots that I don't actually care about because they're not developed in enough detail to make me care (like the whole thing with Abbie's husband), and I wish the Saga of the Swamp Thing volume 1 also included the stories/issues that lead up to the start of the volume, but I guess it only means the collection starts in medias res and by and large, the stories make for good reading. The whole volume is wonderful and poetic, from the get go. Swamp Thing spends a lot of the first issue, before he's "killed", ruminating on his own nature, the nature of his dead adversary Anton Arcane, the nature of the world at large and whether things like Arcane and himself still have any place in it. Maybe you were right. Maybe you were right... just to die like that. It's a new world, Arcane. It's full of shopping malls and striplights and software. The dark corners are being pushed back... a little more every day. We're things of shadow, you and I... and there isn't as much shadow as there used to be. Perhaps there was once a world we could have belonged to. Maybe somewhere in Europe... back in the fifteenth century. The world was full of shadows then... full of monsters... not any more. Things like us can't survive in the light, Arcane. Perhaps you realised that right at the end. Maybe you were right... maybe we're better dead. Maybe the world has run out of room for monsters... My favourite story is definitely the one where Dr Woodrue is hired to... investigate Swamp Thing's corpse and finds things in the corpse that look like human organs but could never possibly fulfil the function of organs. The conclusion of that story, that Swamp Thing is not Alec Holland but plant matter that thinks it's Alec Holland, is just perfect. Swamp Thing's depression era that just naturally follows from that is kind of funny - he's so sad that he never really was Alec Holland that he just lies down and goes to sleep for a good long while, eventually coming back only to slap Dr Woodrue down when he gets too uppity about what The Green wants and needs. The other funny moment of that story arc is that the Justice League are stuck on their space station, unable to do a single thing about the Floronic Man until Swamp Thing does his thing first and makes the entire world safe again. The last story, with the fear demon, I wasn't sold on. It felt disjointed and I don't really care about the Abbie and Matt drama, to be honest. I did care when Etrigan the Demon showed up, with his red romper/booty shorts outfit and his cloak and Peter Pan boots, speaking in rhyme and ready and willing to obliterate men, women, and children, as long as he got his man. Or his demon, rather. I also care that Matt is now, I guess, possessed? That should make for interesting reading in the next volume, I bet. The art itself... beautiful. The yellow-green-red-brown colour scheme is so vivid, certain panels just burn themselves into my retina and my brain. Would I read more: I've already ordered the next few volumes in this specific collection + some others. I also definitely want to read more of Etrigan, so I guess I'm going to have to hunt down his stories as well. Would I recommend it: Yes. Absolutely. ...more |
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| B0053ET5C2
| unknown
| 4.10
| 205,230
| 1985
| May 31, 2011
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Why I read it: Part of my Vampire Chronicles readthrough. Thoughts: Really shot my reading challenge in the foot by picking up this book (and one other Why I read it: Part of my Vampire Chronicles readthrough. Thoughts: Really shot my reading challenge in the foot by picking up this book (and one other) too early in the year, because it takes so long to get through Lestat's waffling and I found myself daydreaming of never reading (or listening to) a single word ever again. As much as I adore him, he's... Lestat. He made Louis, and Louis is an artist at the craft of self-sabotage, and Lestat is very much the same. On a technical level, his story suffers from the need to fix some of the character assassination that was committed in IWTV. In IWTV, Lestat was aloof, impenetrable, unemotional unless it suited him better to show his hand (at which point he became dramatically over-emotional), mocking and kind of an all-around bastard. As a reader, when Claudia tried to kill him, I was pleased. I love Lestat, but he had it coming, and The Vampire Lestat starts to work on repairing that negative publicity in the funniest possible way: Lestat simply goes "Well, that's just his opinion," and then immediately proceeds to trauma dump by way of explanation as to why he was a complete asshat in IWTV. To the author's credit, that kind of works. His greatest strength is that he doesn't ever really ask for pity. He is pitiful and pathetic, and an absolute idiot at times, but he doesn't make himself out to be the victim. However, I don't think ever truly cops to his faults, either. It's all rather left up to the reader in a "This is what I did and this is why I did it; was I wrong? You be the judge" sort of way and, hilariously, the answer is "Yes, Lestat, you were wrong and you shouldn't have done that." Should he have run away with Nicki? Yes. Should he have joined the theatre troupe and found happiness on stage? Yes. Should have turned Gabrielle when it was obvious she was going to die? Well, why not. Should he have hung around the theatre and been their shadowy benefactor? No! Should he have turned Nicki? No!! Should he have messed around with Armand? Absolutely not!!! Should he have gone down to play music for Akasha and Enkil on Marius's island? NO!!!! And his excuse is always something along the lines of "How could I have known that was going to happen?" and "I didn't mean to do that!" He's honestly the funniest of the vampires. Stand-out scene: I listened to this audiobook at work, and I've jotted down a lot of various lines and moments and turns of phrase across a great many number of days, and I can't find all of those notes at the moment, but for my money, there's a few things that will stick with me: 1. The horror of Lestat's making. Everything about him once he leaves his ancestral home seems to beg to be broken. After his cruel upbringing and the wolf-killing episode, he could have become a ghastly feudal lord more horrible than his father and brothers. But he blossomed and was happy in Paris -- poor, but happy with the troupe and with Nicki. To be taken suddenly from that and be entirely unmade then reshaped in the dark, by a monster... and then to be left alone to try to comprehend your new existence and your place in the world... that would have broken a lesser character. It broke Nicki, and it could have broken Louis, if Lestat would've been a more horrible maker. 2. Nicolas de Lenfent, with his nihilism and dread and the ultimate shattering of his mind, which continues even further once he's turned. Lestat being terrified of Nicki and his darkness after he becomes a vampire is moving; loving someone and losing them like that is moving. The fact that the vampire troupe cut off his hands to stop him from playing hellish music, and then they gave them back to him and he wrote a bunch of plays, then asked for a sabbat to be staged and he danced into the flames... scary. Every time I read that part, I pause and think about it for a good long while. What is it like, to be that untethered from existence and to only have your artistic drive left for a little while, and then lose even that. 3. Gabrielle's turning, her rage at becoming unchangeable for all eternity. Her simmering fury at being a woman -- probably the very first character I ever encountered who was angry at this simple coin flip of biology, maybe even the character who set me on the path of questioning my gender some years later. Without Gabrielle, who provided the framework for my own early rage against womanhood, would I have transitioned? Probably. But would I have been able to reread this novel at 34 and go, "Ahh, yes, that time when I was 14 and thought to myself, don't all women want to be men actually." 4. Marius's story. I've never read Blood and Gold, and in The Vampire Armand he came across as a much better vampire maker than Lestat, but in this book he was kind of just there. The most memorable parts of him were his instant love of Lestat, his prescience of future adoration of Lestat not now but once Lestat has experienced humanity for a full lifetime and has become a better-rounded person, and his story of the gauls, the gods of the grove, the burnt vampires, and Akasha and Enkil. The lattermost get a full backstory in the third book in the series, so I won't talk about that here, but occult worship of vampires as gods is something I wish this book had gone into in more detail. I'm hoping it'll come up in Blood and Gold. 5. For my money, the most important part of the whole book is Lestat's reunion with Louis. Finally, after a century or however long it's been, they seem perfectly matched because they've both had the time to mature in their own ways. Louis has languished in his melancholy through the years but has become self-assured, and Lestat went into the earth and slept a while, and woke up refreshed and willing to show his hand for once. From earlier in the book, when he hears the Armand didn't actually kill Louis (which is what he heavily intimated to Lestat), I jotted down the words "My beautiful Louis, surviving" and at their meeting near the end of the book, when Louis asks to stay with Lestat, I jotted down this: "I couldn't immediately answer. Again, the sheer excitement was excruciating, and the love I felt for him was positively humiliating." Excruciating! Positively humiliating! Oh, to love and desire someone so deeply that your emotions absolutely humble, debase, and obliterate you!! I was worried that he would turn away because it's absolutely horrible to have to admit to one's own feelings, but the fact that he then didn't, and that they do get together again... such blessed relief. Would I read a sequel or the author's other works: Yes. The Queen of the Damned was the first Anne Rice I ever read, probably around the time (if not immediately before) I was an actual teen and it produced an incredible obsession with the vampire Armand, which now, as an adult, makes me go "Hmm, maybe I shouldn't have learned how to deal with my emotions from an emotionally stunted vampire whose love language is stalking and tormenting his would-be paramours, and attempting to destroy them when they turn him down." Would I recommend this: Sure, why not. If you've read Interview, this one's a cinch. I definitely think this is required reading if you want to watch the new AMC adaptation (which is brilliant, btw), because it makes Lestat all the sadder. Related: Interview with the Vampire review ...more |
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| 1612183956
| 9781612183954
| 1612183956
| 3.94
| 139,723
| Aug 21, 2012
| Aug 21, 2012
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!!!!!!! THIS REVIEW MAY HAVE SOME SPOILERS. I normally don't spoiler-hide my reviews or even warn for them, because I don't think that many people read !!!!!!! THIS REVIEW MAY HAVE SOME SPOILERS. I normally don't spoiler-hide my reviews or even warn for them, because I don't think that many people read my reviews in the first place, and also I think the nature of writing reviews longer than five sentences means there will always be spoilers. But this is a suspense/mystery novel, so the warning may be more important here. !!!!!! Why I read it: The show was on Disney+, I watched the first season (and tried the second season and promptly gave up) and I was engaged enough that I wanted to know more. Besides, I have to admit that while I don't often care if an adaptation is 100% faithful to a novel, I'm always curious about what changes get made and seeing if they work better for the story or not. Thoughts: It's been a couple of months since I binged season 1 of the show so I don't quite remember everything, but I remember enough -- certainly enough to have opinions. First off, I think the first season covers the first two books in the trilogy. At the end of this one, he discovers the reality of Wayward Pines and accepts the position of sheriff; that happens halfway through season 1. If I had to guess, I'd say the rest of season 1 was the adaptation of book 2 in the series, which is why the story was still cohesive, and then it nosedived as soon as it hit season 2. However, I do not intend to read book 2 and find out for myself. Pines is an okay book, but having seen the show and read this book, I feel like the adaptation is close enough that I'd mostly be frustrated and/or bored by reading book 2, much like I was throughout reading book 1. The premise is definitely interesting enough that I wish I'd read the book first, then got really hyped for the show, then enjoyed the show for the close-enough adaptation that it is. I would've enjoyed the book a lot more in that case. But reading it after seeing the show, the characters are sort of... there. They exist. They allegedly have feelings, but they all seem somewhat hollow. This is an issue with Crouch's writing, specifically, because I've read two of his other books in quick succession after this one, and they all have the same shortfall: he tells you what they're feeling as if they're cardboard cutouts who can't speak for themselves. Granted, that's what characters in a work of fiction are, but here it has the unfortunate effect of no character being a real stand-out based on their personality; rather, they stand out based on extraordinary things (Pilcher is a genius, Beverly is a computer sales rep from 1985 or something, Ethan was tortured while serving his country in the Middle East, Theresa is... Ethan's wife, who is there just to stand around and be sad) and nothing else. To add to that, all the one-dimensional characters in Wayward Pines seem to only exist to uphold Wayward Pines and perpetuate its mystery, or as pawns in Pilcher's fantasy of saving the world. It felt like absolutely nothing was happening for long stretches of the book (even when Ethan was being chased through the woods or trying to find out what was going on in the town) because characters simply went through the motions with little sense of purpose and individuality. Overall, the vibe I got from the book was half Twin Peaks (the admitted inspiration in the acknowledgments at the end) and half Michael Crichton -- early Crichton, maybe The Andromeda Strain Crichton as far as concepts go, but without the deep dive into science to back it up properly. Some parts, especially towards the end, felt like the author was really in love with the conceit of the book, but lacked the power to make it engaging. Then again, when the twist happened in the show, I was all in. So maybe I would've been all in if I'd read this first. Stand-out scene: Possibly the worst change from book to TV was Ethan's backstory trauma. In the show, he made a bad call on a case, and a bunch of people were killed as a result (I want to say in a bombing, but I don't recall exactly). In the book, the helicopter he was in crashed (or was shot down? again, don't remember, my eyes were kind of glazing over) in hostile territory, he was taken prisoner and tortured for some time. I don't usually go in for torture, and I definitely don't go in for the US military, but I thought the torture scenes, and in particular the last scene of the flashback, were probably the strongest part of the book. Up until then Ethan was really kind of boring and flat as a protagonist, but the torture bits made his emotional distance make sense. Of course, the effect was rather diminished by how the flashbacks were fitted together with the scenes taking place in the present (i.e. poorly), and also by the author specifically telling me, over and over again, that this physical and psychological bout of torture basically broke him and changed him forever, and affected every relationship he has ever had since, as if I couldn't come to the same conclusion by myself, but I'll take my wins where I can get them. And speaking of wins: Ethan's son in the show is in his mid-teens or something like that, and is annoying AF. So I was very glad that in the book he is eight years old and off-page for most of it, and even when he is a little older, he has, like, one scene and two lines. Would I read a sequel or the author's other works: I'm not going to read further into the series, but I've read two of the author's standalone books... reviews forthcoming. Would I recommend this: Probably not, honestly. Not unless someone said "I really wanna read something like..." and described the vibes of this book. ...more |
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| B0053ET58Q
| 4.02
| 605,696
| Apr 12, 1976
| May 31, 2011
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Why I read it: I bought the audiobook ages ago and listened to it last year, I want to say, and recently.... I was just feeling it. Though, to be fair
Why I read it: I bought the audiobook ages ago and listened to it last year, I want to say, and recently.... I was just feeling it. Though, to be fair, I have been "feeling it" with some regularity since the year of our lord 2004, when I had my first Anne Rice encounter (my mom's copy of Queen of the Damned, secreted away from the high place she purposely put it so I wouldn't get to it). Thoughts: The funniest thing about this book is that it suffered from Dune Syndrome. In my Dune review I talked about how I hated Dune upon first reading it, and a fresh reread some years later, when I'm... well, I'd like to think I'm wiser, but who the hell knows, right? But a fresh reread with a new perspective does help. I also recently saw a post, somewhere, about "how come we used to read 500 pages so easily when we were kids, and now we struggle with short stories" and yeah, there's a lot of factors at play, no doubt about it, but I think it took me, personally, ages to develop my reading comprehension and also my aesthetic sense to the point where it is now, and Interview with the Vampire is a perfect case example. This is a book I adored in high school. It's a book (and series) I frequently returned to as a young adult. And yet when I last read it in 2014, I left this pithy review: This novel no longer has the hold on me that it had when I was in high school, but it was enjoyable nonetheless. That's it, and two stars. I have no doubt that I meant every word of that review. I probably also considered giving the book just one star, all the while being so very smug about how grown-up I was, and how I was no longer blinded by weird gay vampires. Who was I trying to impress by looking this cool about a bunch of weird gay vampires who spend most of their time moping and pondering the purpose of life? The mother bat, Anne Rice herself? She wouldn't have been impressed because she was many things, sure, but among all that, she was true to herself. And so I must be true to myself and say that the weird gay vampires still have me enthralled. What I didn't like in 2014, I'm not sure, because my terse review doesn't say. I can only assume, having some rough knowledge and memory of who I was in 2014, that I didn't like the meandering storyline. "Plot? What plot?" now refers to all-out sexually explicit fiction, but in 2014 I would've given IWTV that tag simply for the apparent pointlessness of the story. If my review would've gone on longer, it would've said something like, "Some things happen. Then nothing happens for 50 pages. Some more things happen. Then nothing again for another 70 pages." and so on and so forth. There is an astounding amount of navel-gazing in this novel, and The Vampire Lestat only gets somewhat better about this, let's make that clear. But at its core, I don't think the novel tries to be more than that. I think there is definitely a traditional story here, Point A to Point B to Point C to Point D (or to Pointe du Lac, as it were), but that's not what Interview with the Vampire is about, and reading this book simply for the Point A-B-C-D storyline will probably always yield a two-star rating and a pithy review. Primarily, and far more interestingly, Interview with the Vampire is about love and grief. It's not even about love and hate and grief. It's just love and grief and the scorch marks they leave on the soul, and they're dressed up in a great many beautiful words, all pearls on a string, embellishing a lot of scenes with exceptional and unnecessary great detail. Mind you, I know why Anne Rice wrote this, what inspired the character of Claudia. I just think it's a real tour de force to be able to relay all that tapestry of pain and beauty and horror -- the horror of loving, the horror of loss, the horror of holding on too tightly, the horror of being changed by grief, the horror of being unchanged and unchangeable by grief, the horror of simply having to go on, the horror of the body and the heart and the soul. And, conversely, for characters like Armand, in particular, there is the love of all those things, and the love of grief itself, grief and pleasure going hand in hand, pain and torment and love neverending. What a beautiful novel. Stand-out scene: I think the past few times I've listened to this audiobook, I was struck by the following: 1. Louis and Claudia's encounters with the Balkan vampires. I grew up in that region of the world, I've heard the stories, I've spent many nights in the countryside terrified of strigoi and moroi. This part of IWTV, I can always picture very clearly and always wish it went on for longer, so it can give me more chills. 2. Claudia asking Louis to bring Madeleine into the fold. The sheer sadness of the loss she is experiencing, as Louis is seduced away by Armand, and the loss Louis is experiencing by having to give away Claudia for everyone's sake... I don't know, it gets to me. It's a very tragic rock-and-hard place situation, somewhat undercut by how the characters basically placed themselves in this untenable, horrible situation, and could just as easily leave it, but they actively choose to make things worse, time after time. I wish I could say something really poetic about that, something about how in the end, we can only be the people we are. 3. After the entire book, after Louis makes Madeleine, after the burning, after Armand and Louis run off together, they are both like ghosts to each other. Louis is mourning a lot of things in his own slow, stilted way, and he can't give Armand what he wants and he can't accept what Armand wants to give him, and then they simply part forever just because for all the heat and attraction that existed at first, they simply had nothing tying them together. For my money, this is always the saddest part of the novel. 4. Lestat, as a character. He's just so stupid and so [clenches fist]. I don't know. I think after so many years and so many Vampire Chronicles beloveds, Lestat may just be My Guy. He is the easiest to punish (and often he deserves it, in the story Louis tells), but he is also the most human of them all. Would I read a sequel or the author's other works: Yes. I'm already listening to The Vampire Lestat (a book I think I may have only read once), but I'm also going to get the books in print again for the first time in ~15 years. I'd like to annotate them, I'd like to really pin down the passages and turns of phrase that hurt me good. Would I recommend this: Yes. ...more |
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Apr 29, 2024
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May 2024
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May 03, 2024
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Audible Audio
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| 9781529073614
| 1529073618
| 3.60
| 8,850
| Sep 27, 2022
| Sep 27, 2022
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!!!!!!! THIS REVIEW MAY HAVE SOME SPOILERS. I normally don't spoiler-hide my reviews or even warn for them, because I don't think that many people read !!!!!!! THIS REVIEW MAY HAVE SOME SPOILERS. I normally don't spoiler-hide my reviews or even warn for them, because I don't think that many people read my reviews in the first place, and also I think the nature of writing reviews longer than five sentences means there will always be spoilers. But this is a suspense/mystery novel, so the warning may be more important here. !!!!!! Why I read it: Picked it up during one of our many bookshop trips, and then last week felt like reading something weird. Thoughts: Oh boy, was this weird! And I loved it. I don't know how other people feel about it, why they would rate it low or whatever, but this definitely felt like it was written for me. If I was rating this on the basis of "how well did this work for me on an emotional/spiritual level", I'd rate it at 10/10. If I was rating it on the basis of "how well did this work for me on a literary level", I guess it would be maybe an 8/10... which is still pretty good, really! The one thing I really didn't enjoy was the last 30 or so pages of the book. I felt that ending the book with Emile and the doctor's successful escape from Verdira was... well, it was logical, I guess? But I don't think it really added anything to the story that the story hadn't already achieved, and everything that it did add, like the doctor's name and the slowly budding closeness/trust between her and Emile, could've well been worked into the story earlier, say, for example when the doc and Emile join forces and make their escape from the chateau. So I felt kind of cheated when there were still 30 pages after what I felt was the natural end point of the story, but there wasn't anything really worth dwelling on for 30 more pages. Otherwise, 10s across the board, really. This is a full-blown gothic horror novel, with all the wonderful elements that you'd expect: the isolated locale, the weird/fucked up locals, the body horror, a mystery, the corruption and decay of a bloodline and all that it touches... the very strange protagonist. Leech absolutely read like the stillborn-and-then-revivified child or the unholy union between Gormenghast and Vampire Hunter D. There were vivid elements of folklore and folk horror, mixed with speculative medicine, taking place in a speculative future. I don't even know which aspects of that to focus on in my review, to be honest, because there were so many points at which I made satisfied noises. What do I talk about? The biggest thing that's been on my mind has been: where is this story set??? I just need to know!!! I spent a lot of time trying to puzzle it out based on the hints there were. Speaking a French patois (that was beautifully rendered in writing, for once, and that I could actually decipher easily)? Must be France. The mention of troubadours made me think of Occitan/Provençal, so South of France? But there's no huge mountains in France to my knowledge, and France is not even that far north! Plus, to my not-very-knowledgeable mind, there is the very strong blue-collar spirit of Appalachian mining and mining disasters and revolts, which is not something I typically associate with France. But do they speak French in Appalachia? Not really, I don't think French really took off there. And then there were the ventigeaux, which were elk? But massive and spooky? So I mentally placed Verdira in the Canadian Rockies or in the Canadian Appalachian Uplands, though of course I'm likely wrong. This may very well be in France. After all, there are mentions of hundreds, thousands of years of disasters, of the lands changing, of mountain chains breaking apart and opening and allowing access to long-isolated populated areas in their interior, like Verdira. So in a sense this really could be set anywhere. But it must be somewhere, and I need to know where. What else is interesting? The Institute? SO interesting! A parasite from the stars -- a parasite humanity sent to the stars, returned! A symbiote, an invader that wants to help ensure its own survival, a monster that's cruel to be kind! A thing that changes everything about its hosts, annihilates all of its hosts natural attributes in order to gain another brain, another pair of eyes, another set of working limbs. A parasite with competition. A somewhat related train of thought: gender or the lack thereof when it comes to the parasite. In my review for this novella, I said that I don't think using the 2nd person is quite the best way to denote a character's gender, lack of gender, or their place in or out of the binary. For my money, it was done right in Leech via its... pacing, I guess? The protagonist starts out ambiguous, an Institute physician through and through. It's made obvious really early on that regardless of whether the body initially had a gender of its own, it was rendered null via the process by which the physician was created. Then, as one parasite starts to muscle out the other, gender markers appear in the narrative -- first, the menses, but then also other characters overtly start to refer to the doctor as female. I thought that and the character of the Priest were such clever ways to employ otherness and queerness and speculate on gender in the future. What else? Wheatrock? What even IS wheatrock! I wanna know all about wheatrock! What process creates wheatrock? Why did they shoot wheatrock into space? What else? The baron and his family? Honestly, the family felt like the biggest rip-off of the Groans, but it worked so well for me and I wish there were more books like this. They were absolutely appalling and yet so exciting. Everything they did was horrible, and yet I enjoyed reading about them just as I enjoyed reading Titus Groan. Didier, for my fucked-up tastes, is exactly what I wanted Lord Sepulchrave to be, exactly what I imagined he was -- dare I say it, what I fantasised he was. So if the author's intent was to take the Groans and ratchet up the taboo factor to 11, then by Jove, they've fucking succeeded. 10/10, no notes. Additional comment: I knew I was gonna love Emile from the get-go. Can't explain it. Just knew it. Did not expect the bonus sadness, that most tragic of curses: looking like one's mother in the eyes of someone who loved her so hard, it drives him over the edge of sanity. But that's the gothic all over, and I thought that was great. What else? Worldbuilding via folklore: splendid. If I'm honest, I didn't understand everything about this world. I understood enough, but not everything, and I still had a great time. The stories definitely helped; after all, it's how people have made sense of the world for thousands of years -- ever since there first were people who could communicate with each other -- so it makes sense that that's how a future human would also make sense of whatever is going on at the time, especially in a time and a place that has gone through what I can only explain as "multiple apocalypses". Introducing the stories one by one in order to help make sense of the world was brilliant. I guess the storytelling point goes hand in hand with a more general point about the language employed in the book, and my point is simply that it was wonderful. So heavy and so descriptive, never really shying away but also never being outright gross, and that means a lot to me. I've always found everything about the body -- especially my body -- to be horror, especially before I transitioned, and body horror as a genre has always been sort of... yucky. (Other than the body horror in Akira, which inexplicably makes me hungry.) Leech made it work. It made it less confronting and more intriguing. I genuinely think that even if I hadn't know the author was queer based on the author blurb at the front of the book, I would've been able to guess simply based on the way certain words and certain descriptions work in context. There is sharpness, but there is sensitivity. There is horror, but there is beauty. In conclusion, Leech is a stand-out debut as far as I'm concerned, and I'm very excited for the future. Just for fun, for The Aesthetic™, and because I finally found my Thoth deck again, I pulled a few tarot cards that I thought matched the story. I present to you: the Leech Spread. Stand-out scene: Gods, but there were so many. The Priest's story time, each time. Sunday dinners with the family. The part where the doctor tries to convert Emile, because the doctor sort of falls down a very deep memory well and has multiple epiphanies at the same time. The birth scene, oh gods, the birth scene. Would I read a sequel or the author's other works: Hell yeah. Would I recommend this: Hell yeah. P.S.: Hiron Ennes, DM me about wheatrock and the location of Verdira!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The people (me) must know!!!!!! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Apr 18, 2024
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Apr 25, 2024
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Apr 26, 2024
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Paperback
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| B0147PI8KW
| unknown
| 3.93
| 4,086
| Oct 2015
| Oct 16, 2015
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Why I read it: I watched the movie on a flight, circa 2016, and I loved it. I've seen the movie several times since. I don't usually pick up novelisat
Why I read it: I watched the movie on a flight, circa 2016, and I loved it. I've seen the movie several times since. I don't usually pick up novelisations because I think they're generally not very good, but I listened to the sample for it on Audible and thought the narrator was doing a good enough job for me to spend a credit on it. Thoughts: I really don't like novelisations, usually! I really do think they kind of all suck, though there are some exceptions that are more enjoyable than most. This one didn't suck! It definitely wasn't astounding, but it didn't suck! It added dimension to some of the characters and their relationships, and I thought the narrator did a great job reading the text. There are some things I didn't enjoy. Characters' actions and behaviours were sometimes spelled out in too much detail -- told, not shown -- and repeated too much. Something I really didn't like was the point of view switch between Edith and her father and Alan and Thomas and the house(?). I get that's how a movie works usually, and how the Crimson Peak movie worked, specifically, and I don't know how much freedom the novelisation's author was given as to the form and structure of the story (maybe not at all?), but I still didn't like it. I felt that every perspective switch took away from the power of the story, broke my willing suspension of disbelief a little. A maximum of two POVs would have been enough, for my taste -- maybe just Edith and the house, with the house somehow providing insight into Lucille and Thomas's actions? It's not like I really needed the Alan chapters; he could've told Edith all about the things he'd done when they met again, close to the end. I also didn't really like the flashback parts near the end, detailing Edith and Thomas's childhood. They were useful as far as character work went, but broke the narrative flow too much -- again, it respected the movie, I think, but didn't make for a good book. Finally, the protracted chase/fight scenes at the end were simply tedious. Most of my complaints about this novelisation boil down to "it hewed too close to the movie" but by and large, I think this was an actually okay take on the gothic novel! The important elements were there: the lonely house, the degeneration of a bloodline, the innocent protagonist, blood and corruption and incest... all good stuff! I particularly enjoyed Edith's New Woman attitude. It's always fun to watch the strength of willful women crumble a bit as they're faced with nightmare scenarios, and then watch them find new sources of strength. I also liked Thomas's character. I thought it was more obvious in the book than in the movie that he actually loved Edith a lot, but he had spent his entire life in a snare -- Lucille's, the house's -- and he didn't know how to escape, or that he even wanted to escape until it was too late. I spent a lot of listening time (especially in the last hour or so of the novel, when characters were being stabbed left and right until surely no one had any blood left in them) wondering how things might've panned out differently if only Thomas would've shown a bit more backbone at various points of the story. Would I read a sequel or the author's other works: Honestly... no? A sequel is obviously out of the question, and the author doesn't otherwise appeal to me. Would I recommend this: Maybe? Maybe not? Maybe only to someone who enjoyed the movie as well, because the bottom line is that while this Crimson Peak did respect the classic elements of the gothic novel, it only did so because the movie itself did that. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Apr 18, 2024
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Apr 23, 2024
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Apr 26, 2024
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Audible Audio
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| B0CJXBD1X2
| 3.91
| 2,359
| Jun 11, 2024
| Jun 11, 2024
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!!!!!!! THIS REVIEW MAY HAVE SOME SPOILERS. I normally don't spoiler-hide my reviews or even warn for them, but there is some mystery/suspense in this !!!!!!! THIS REVIEW MAY HAVE SOME SPOILERS. I normally don't spoiler-hide my reviews or even warn for them, but there is some mystery/suspense in this novel, so be warned. !!!!!! Why I read it: I haven't read Julia Armfield's other stuff, but the blurb for this one seemed right up my alley. Thoughts: In many ways, this was right up my alley. I've started using a reporter's notepad to jot down quotes from novels as I go through them -- the equivalent of highlighting passages on the Kindle, but I don't always want to be highlighting/annotating physical copies -- and I've gotta say... I copied down a whole lot of passages here, a lot of observations on the nature of the end times, and a lot of POV characters' observations on other characters, especially ones I found myself in (e.g. Irene talking about Jude's tranquility, their "calm as a method of attack", and Agnes and Stephanie talking about why Stephanie works a job she doesn't like -- "There's things you have to do to stay alive and then any space you have left over to make staying alive feel bearable"). I won't spend any time talking about how nice it is to read queernormative fiction. It is nice. This was really good, as far as that aspect goes. I don't need to say any more. Having said that, the best thing I can say about this novel is that it's interesting how some of my feelings about it exist in direct opposition to some of my other feelings about it. Take the characters: they're flawed to hell and back, but unbelievably real. Their approach to life, womanhood and sisterhood is relatable (I was an older sister before I was an older brother), as are their respective worries: Isla's need to be in control even if this often works against her, Irene's need to rebel/be contrary and her hatred of only ever being remembered for her past deeds/not who she is now, Agnes's pervasive feeling that she's unwanted so she should be the first to leave so as to not get hurt. Even their fraught relationships with their parents are understandable, if not outright relatable (whomst amongst us hasn't been hurt by a parent who was just "doing the best" they knew how to). However, in opposition to that is the fact that these women are simply unbearable. I related to them and yet I didn't want to relate to them. I wanted them to survive and get better, but by the end I was exhausted by them and their endless spiralling and circling the drain on the same issues over and over again, like when you have a sore tooth and you know it just needs to go, man, so you should take medication for it and see a professional, but what you do is wallow in it and keep poking at it with your tongue. Never mind that finally, in the very last fucking chapter, they finally come together again and they seem to be clearing the air, and then the whole fucking cult descending on them happens and ugh. It was so frustrating, the end of the novel just left me... stressed out but numb, overwhelmed by the futility of it all and the sense of wasted potential. Another one of my points of contradiction is the whole post-apocalypse(?) setting. I say "post-apocalypse(?)" because it definitely feels like the end times have already happened, but then it also feels like they haven't happened yet. A character makes this observation near the end, on the topic of the Book of Revelation (not "Revelations", btw, as it's said in the novel): "People think it's just hellfire and brimstone, four horsemen and out, but actually the end times go on and on." This is true. People do think, generally, that the end times are sort of like Armageddon (1998) or Deep Impact (1998); it's one big thing and then it's all over. But the BoR interpretations, as varied as they are, all seem to spread the end times across a pretty long stretch. So the Wet End Times™ of Private Rites seem right, for a lack of a better word. I enjoyed that. I particularly enjoyed the fact that the End Times™ are also a protagonist of the novel; not a chapter or a POV section goes by without characters observing the weather, observing the ever-increasing flooding, observing how things are vs how they used to be -- the mist, the city grown porous, the short stretches of no-rain, the roleplay forum where people RP things like driving on actual land, or mowing the lawn, or being bored at the airport. Most of the passages I jotted down pertain to the rain and the movement of water. On the other hand, do these End Times™ have to be so much like Current Times™? It gave me, honestly, nigh insurmountable anxiety to think of it. This speculative future is much like our present. They have smartphones, cafes and Gaggia machines, temp jobs and payroll systems, Barcelona chairs, roleplay forums, queer clubs and drugs. The only difference is the flooding and more and more of the city being underwater. So, even though in a way I get it, and I admire the choice and the realistic view of it, I also hate it. I wish it was somehow more obviously in the future. I wish there was a timeline, a vague year. (Maybe there was and I missed it?) Most importantly, I wish it was more different than today. Now, a source of major disappointment: the cult angle. From the get go, I was invested in this angle. The blurb promised "strangers who have always been unusually interested in [the sisters'] lives" and the prologue promised weird cult shit, but so little happens, and the little that happens is so sparse. The more I read of the book and the fewer pages I had to go before hitting the back cover, the more confused I was about how the author was going to fit all of that in the remaining pages. The answer is simple: she really didn't, lol. There are a few mysterious people who show interest in Agnes (read: they make prolonged eye contact with her and seem to be on the verge of trying to approach her), but they disappear off the page as quick as they appear on it. Each of the sisters individually recollects an event or two from their childhood that was upsetting in its strangeness, and later this connects to doomsday cult activity, but even the importance of those events fades away when you actually spend most of the book reading about how cruel their father was, how one time he punished toddler Agnes by putting her out in the hallway and letting her scream, all alone, until she wet herself, and one time he left his three daughters alone at home (the oldest was 15 maybe) for four days on end without even telling them he would do that. Like, clearly there is a cult, and both of the missing/dead mothers were involved with it, but its existence and activity are never properly pressed until less than 20 pages away from the end. Up until then, the book the instances of one random person making eye contact with Agnes at the club and so on are far less important than these characters' actual lived trauma and how they're dealing with it. So I feel cheated, to be honest. It really feels like the cult aspect of this whole thing could have been developed more. Maybe more page time could have been given to stranger encounters and less page time could have been given to Isla drunkenly musing on why her marriage failed or Irene and Jude arguing or Agnes fingering women at the club or at the swimming pool or wherever. I don't know. Also, that ending? What???? What????????????? I was so baffled and put off, and still so numb from the all-pressure-no-release of unrealised potential, that I immediately dove into another book and was relieved to find that it was a bad book. That, I can deal with. This? No. Would I read more: I mean... sure. I did actually like this, so I'd be interested in the author's other work. She nails tone and atmosphere and world-building so well, the premise is so interesting, her characters are so real, it felt so easy to read. But the sadness... egads, the sadness. So does this author now go on my autobuy list? Not really. Would I recommend it: Like, hand-on-heart honestly? Probably not to anyone looking to read something casually, and definitely not to friends who get emotionally compromised easily. Some books are a cathartic sort of sad, you read them and come out the other end sad but different, better. This isn't one of those books. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jun 28, 2024
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Jul 20, 2024
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Mar 07, 2024
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Kindle Edition
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| 0712368213
| 9780712368216
| B0CCZ218VY
| 3.91
| 898
| 1946
| Aug 10, 2023
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really liked it
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!!!!!!! THIS REVIEW HAS SPOILERS. I normally don't spoiler-hide my reviews or even warn for them, because I don't think that many people read my review !!!!!!! THIS REVIEW HAS SPOILERS. I normally don't spoiler-hide my reviews or even warn for them, because I don't think that many people read my reviews in the first place, and also I think the nature of writing reviews longer than five sentences means there will always be spoilers. But this is a suspense/mystery novel, so the warning may be more important here. !!!!!! Why I read it: I've been listening to Suspense at work, and so many early stories are credited to John Dickson Carr (not always just to him, but a lot to him), including some really interesting ones, so of course I thought I'd read some of his published work. I don't know how I ended up getting He Who Whispers - it may have been really cheap for the Kindle (maybe it was on KU?), but regardless, the plot appealed to me. Thoughts: Wow, that was a really quick read. Here I was, lamenting that I would have to revise my Goodreads goal downwards because I was reading too slowly, and then this came along and I knocked it out of the park in very short order! That's not to say nothing happens in it; quite the opposite, really...a lot happens! A professor gives a lecture on an impossible murder to an audience of two (Miles and Barbara). Miles hires the notorious murder suspect from that same impossible murder as a librarian. The murder suspect seems haunted, but innocent. Miles's friend (Dr Gideon Fell) and the professor with the murder lecture show up in the middle of the night. They tell Miles that the murder suspect may be...a vampire?? Miles's sister appears to be killed on that same night -- but wait! she's not really dead!! The murder suspect beats a hasty retreat in the morning. Miles follows, runs into Barbara. Barbara reveals all that she already knows about the murder suspect. They catch up to the murder suspect. The mystery begins to be revealed -- but wait! they are ambushed and evidence is stolen!! Finally, after a dramatic chase and collapse, the pieces are all assembled and the mystery is resolved. Honestly, if you said that's pretty stock stuff for murder mysteries, I'd agree. What makes it stand out is the way it's written. Carr writes...with sensitivity, I guess you'd say. Most of the characters (maybe even the actual murderer) are somewhat sympathetic, and the initial murder, which basically ruined Fay Seton's life, was unnecessary and tragic. Fay Seton herself, the murder suspect, is also tragic. What she's haunted by is not the fact that she's a vampire or a murderer, but the fact that she's a nymphomaniac in a time period where that was deviancy and degeneracy. No one ever goes into much detail about Fay's proclivities, so there's no way to know whether she was genuinely mentally ill or simply liked having "relations" and that was simply too improper for polite society, but either way, it haunted her and she was betrayed over and over again. But all the other characters involved -- Miles, Barbara, Dr Fell, the professor -- are understanding. Some are more understanding than others, but they still all understand, in the end, that Fay is a victim as much as Miles's sister, and as much as that first dead man at the top of the French tower. And speaking of victims...some real creative murders and cover-ups in this one! I like locked room mysteries and seemingly impossible murders, because the crimes are always so creative. Sometimes they turn out to be really wacky, the Rube Goldberg machines of murder, but usually they're pretty good. The murder on top of the tower was, however, less interesting than the attempt on Miles's sister, which made me go, "Damn, I wish I'd thought of that." And the ending of the novel: touching; beautiful; tragic; perfect. Stand-out scene: My favourite parts were the descriptions of places and weather: London, the French chateau and countryside, and the New Forest. Miles's inclination to jumping out the window so he can roam the New Forest by moon and star was so intensely relatable to me, I wished that passage would go on for longer. I also really liked how tangible WW2 was. I mean -- one of the characters is a presumed vampire, but the war is really the presence subtly haunting this story. There's rations, shortages, blackouts, exemptions, and, of course, Miles and the murderer being invalided out of the war (or simply running away, though it's clear that running away has long been the murderer's favourite pastime). Tasting Notes: Agatha Christie is the obvious one; Suspense for all the shortform Carr you could ever want. Would I read a sequel or the author's other works: Yes. For what it's worth, this book was #16 in the Gideon Fell series, and I didn't feel like I missed out by not starting with #1 (which is great! I really wish more characters were still serialised like this), but this book has made me want to go back to the start. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 07, 2024
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Mar 09, 2024
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Mar 07, 2024
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Kindle Edition
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| B003JTHZ9S
| 3.76
| 1,408
| May 19, 2010
| May 19, 2010
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it was amazing
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Why I read it: V played Alan Wake on the PS5 while I was still struggling with The Magus (the mid-book doldrums were real with that one), so I got to
Why I read it: V played Alan Wake on the PS5 while I was still struggling with The Magus (the mid-book doldrums were real with that one), so I got to see a big chunk of the game. I found the story way more engaging than I thought I would, though I missed big chunks of the game by actually reading or napping, so imagine my joy when I found out about this book. Thoughts: I actually really, really liked this. I've read videogame novelisations before, for games I really liked (Assassin's Creed, Bioshock, Mass Effect), and I think the only one I didn't think was kind of terrible was maybe the first Assassin's Creed novelisation. The follow-ups were basically play-by-plays of the videogame stories, which was fine, but I just always felt like I could've read a walkthrough or the Assassin's Creed wiki pages for that. The Bioshock novelisation was a downright disappointment, and the Mass Effect books I've read (which weren't adaptations of the videogames themselves but set In The World Of...) were kind of boring and not what I wanted to read about. So I set my expectations pretty low on the Alan Wake novelisationm thinking that at the very least, I would get to read the full, detailed story of the game, rather than the truncated and often confusing wiki version. But it really was much better than that, at least to me. On that note, while the book doesn't deserve 5 stars purely on its literary merit, it has 5 stars in my heart (and on my Goodreads account), just because I enjoyed it that much. Some highlights: 1. It explores characters and their relationships more. Barry Wheeler, Sheriff Breaker, Rusty and Rose, Agent Nightingale -- they all had more personality than in the game. In some cases, such as with Nightingale, the book actually did a better job than the game. In the game, according to V, Nightingale simply appears in Bright Falls and is on Alan's trail, but he didn't recall why, and neither did I. The book does actually provide a reason that makes sense for his appearance, as well as give him some dialogue that makes him kind of sympathetic, actually. 2. It explores the nature of the Taken more, or at least Alan's reaction to them. I knew from the game that the Taken are basically shadow versions of townspeople - after all, one of the first Taken Alan encounters is Carl Stucky, the guy he was supposed to get a cabin key from. But because character development (see point 1) wasn't always as obvious in the game, the Taken kind of became Generic Dark Enemy You Shoot With No Qualms. Well, in the book Alan has lots of qualms, especially when he finds Rusty and tries to save him, then shortly after encounters Taken Rusty, a formerly kind man now devoid of all humanity. There was also a lot less shooting in the book, which I think was a vast improvement. In the game, if Alan wants to live, he has to gun down shadow enemies left, right and centre, which is fine for a game. I'm glad the book kind of turned away from that. The only scene where the Taken were just cannon fodder the way they were in the game was the Anderson farm, which is fine; I'm not sure if I would've been able to edit the game's story any better. Other novelisations might've not even edited out all the shooting, making Alan seem like the action star he is in the game. Additionally, with the Taken: the concept of shadow doubles and doppelgangers! Gods, how I love it, it's my (narrative) bread and butter! 3. It delves into Alan Wake's character more than the game. With certain plot developments in Alan Wake 2 (V hasn't finished the game yet so I can't comment on it to the very end, but I can definitely use what I've seen already), it becomes very very clear that Alan's always been... well, both trouble and troubled. The second game deals with that more, but the first game, not so much (from memory). The hints are there (the talk about the paparazzi incident, him flying off the handle when Alice tries to help him), but the book more specifically delves into Alan's growing awareness of how much he fucked up by never getting that side of himself in check before it was literally too late. 4. Barry Wheeler, super-manager. His presence throughout most of the book was a boon and a blessing. It added a lot to character content (see point 1) but it also added a very likeable facet to Alan himself. At an early point in the book, Barry makes Alan a triple decker PB&J sandwich and Alan is very grateful for it. It's a small moment (not in the game iirc) that does a lot of heavy lifting in establishing both of these guys' personalities. Then they get wasted on "white lightning" at the Anderson farm later in the game, which is also really sweet and funny. 5. It explores the writer-writing relationship. Maybe it doesn't do it as well as someone writing pure literary fiction would, unfettered by having to follow the plot of a videogame, but it is definitely aware of genres and tropes, and occasionally comments on them. Alan also frequently laments his writer's block, recalls better times when he could just write easily, and his writer's block is actually an integral element not just of the plot, but of his character. At one point he's told his wife is going to be held hostage until he delivers a completed manuscript, and his failure to even understand the scope of the story he's meant to write terrifies him. He downright fails to write that story - or any story, for that matter - until the very end, and what's more, throughout the book he's haunted by the sound of someone (himself, from the week he doesn't remember? Mr Scratch?) typing away on a typewriter. I'm pretty sure if I'd be going through writer's block and everywhere I went I heard the noise of someone who might be an alternate/past version of myself successfully tippy-typing my story, I'd lose all my marbles. 6. This may be overblown from my part, but towards the end it becomes increasingly unclear who Alan Wake really is, and which part of his existence is fiction and which part isn't. He himself wonders whether he wrote Zane back from the dark to help him, or whether Zane wrote him into existence in order to help fight back the Dark Presence. I wish the book would've dealt with that more, but I understand why it didn't. Not like I didn't fixate on this point without any extra encouragement anyway. There is also a point at which I wondered how much of this book is fictional even within the setting, because it's pretty heavily hinted that the Anderson brothers go down in a blaze of glory (while Tor manifests a hammer and also lightning), but then in Alan Wake 2, they're back as if they never got swarmed by Taken. Alan Wake 2 itself brings up a lot of questions about who's really in charge of the narrative and pulling all the strings and surprise surprise, it really doesn't seem to be Alan. 7. Similar to point 6 in that I fixated upon this to a degree that's not really borne out by the writing itself, there's a little throwaway line near the end, where Alice notices that Sheriff Breaker called Alan by his first name, and the sheriff says he asked her to, and Alice says “You must be very special, Sheriff. Alan keeps most people at a distance.” It's true that the only characters who ever call him Alan are Alice (his wife), Barry (his agent/bff), and the sheriff (would-be-friend). But more importantly, I found it very interesting, personally, that Alan is referred to as "Wake" exclusively throughout the narration, even though the entire thing is told through his 3rd person point of view, and the narration is fairly intimate and introspective, unexpectedly close up on his feelings and thoughts. Sure, the bigger, more rational part of me says "It's a really cool last name and it gives it a certain je ne sais quoi to only ever say "Wake said this", "Wake did that"". But I think it also gives it a certain je ne sais quoi to think that Alan dislikes himself so much due to his perceived failures, that he even keeps himself at a distance, depersonalised and derealised. Stand-out scene: It feels like kind of a cop-out to say that near the end, where Alan finds the Clicker and Tom Zane's page, is my favourite scene, but it is. Alan wondering whether he is the creator or the creation is A++++ for me. Would I read a sequel or the author's other works: Rick Burroughs, whoever you are, wherever you are, I hope you write more. As far as videogame novelisations go, this was top notch. I'm also very curious to see if an Alan Wake 2 novelisation ever manifests, because the narrative structure of the game is full of potential, but it feels like it'd have a high risk/reward ratio. ...more |
Notes are private!
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Feb 05, 2024
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Feb 07, 2024
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Feb 05, 2024
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Kindle Edition
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| 9781940544694
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| 3.89
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| Apr 01, 2015
| Apr 07, 2015
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it was ok
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Why I read it: I've recently had a story idea that involves either multiple dimension shenanigans, multiple timeline shenanigans, or downright Lovecra
Why I read it: I've recently had a story idea that involves either multiple dimension shenanigans, multiple timeline shenanigans, or downright Lovecraftian shenanigans; I haven't made up my mind which yet. But in the meantime, I'm trying to read a bunch of weird fiction across that spectrum, so... that's why this book. Thoughts: Short review, because this was weak so I won't spend a lot of time talking about it. There was a decent idea at the core, but the writing itself was a major letdown. There were three point of view characters, narrating events in the first person at three different points in time - the 1800s, post-AWW2, and the present day - but they all narrated things in the exact same way, using the exact same narrative style, and in many instances using the exact same idioms to express themselves. There was also an overabundance of em dashes across all three POVs. The biggest drawback was that the terror of the events throughout the story was never really dwelled upon. It was simply narrated, and then all three POV characters repeatedly resorted to drink (again, using the same phrasing across the POVs) in order to forget what they saw, when I think the story would've been far better served if they thought about what they saw even as they were drowning their sorrows and themselves in alcohol. It was only towards the end that I finally got what I want in weird science stories: the feeling that humanity is small. What I would have liked: characters questioning how humanity is defined; characters questioning the role of humanity in the universe (or the multiverse, I suppose); characters becoming painfully aware of their mortality and their own potential become "unnatural" or Other. Instead, what I got is characters merely going along with the plot of this book, and never really thinking for themselves. The only real upsides to the book were that it was a remarkably quick read, and that Muir transformed into some sort of paradimensional fish person. Echoes: I can't say I really liked Vandermeer's Annihilation. Don't get me wrong, I liked it well enough to read the book and watch the movie, and I thought it was creepy and suspenseful and occasionally upsetting, but I didn't like it enough to pick up book two of that series. Don't get me wrong, it's plenty weird, but somehow it's not really for me. Having said that, among the contemporary Lovecraftian, weird science stories, it's probably the best I've read so far. It goes into those questions I outlined earlier without compromising on style, which really makes it worth reading. Would I read a sequel or the author's other works: No ...more |
Notes are private!
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Feb 03, 2024
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my rating |
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| 3.49
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Sep 27, 2024
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Sep 29, 2024
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| 4.09
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Sep 19, 2024
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Sep 20, 2024
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| 3.13
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Aug 17, 2024
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Aug 17, 2024
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| 3.77
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Aug 02, 2024
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Aug 02, 2024
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| 3.64
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Jul 21, 2024
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Jul 21, 2024
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| 3.58
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Jul 19, 2024
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Jul 19, 2024
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| 3.98
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Jun 28, 2024
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Jun 27, 2024
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| 3.73
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Jun 25, 2024
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Jun 25, 2024
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| 4.16
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Jun 24, 2024
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Jun 25, 2024
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| 4.09
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Jun 18, 2024
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Jun 19, 2024
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| 4.23
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Jun 06, 2024
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Jun 17, 2024
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| 4.10
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Jun 12, 2024
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Jun 13, 2024
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| 3.94
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May 09, 2024
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May 14, 2024
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| 4.02
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May 2024
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May 03, 2024
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| 3.60
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Apr 25, 2024
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Apr 26, 2024
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| 3.93
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Apr 23, 2024
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Apr 26, 2024
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| 3.91
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Jul 20, 2024
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Mar 07, 2024
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| 3.91
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really liked it
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Mar 09, 2024
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Mar 07, 2024
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| 3.76
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it was amazing
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Feb 07, 2024
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Feb 05, 2024
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| 3.89
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it was ok
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Feb 05, 2024
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Feb 05, 2024
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