okay, so maybe it's not as bad as all that. and maybe as a live shadow show "performed only on halloween night," this would have b...more
candy??
what's this??
okay, so maybe it's not as bad as all that. and maybe as a live shadow show "performed only on halloween night," this would have been more enjoyable to me. but as a book read on halloween night, by someone desperate for distraction after being a hurricane shut-in for a week, it was pretty but not terrifically entertaining.
a canadian writing southern gothic?? i am there. with bells on.
so you have a town that is smalltown, but not as inbreed-y/insular as, say,in Your Hous...more a canadian writing southern gothic?? i am there. with bells on.
so you have a town that is smalltown, but not as inbreed-y/insular as, say,in Your House Is on Fire, Your Children All Gone. niceville is one of those southern historically-respectful towns, with its long memory of its "four families" and the war of northern aggression, and its squinty-eyed suspicion of "the outside." oh, and it might have a haunted lake and some native american curses at work.
it is a ghost story clomped together with a bank robbery storyline, some corporate espionage and an affronted blackmailer lashing out in impotent rage. and it is like overhearing four different conversations that eventually all come together into a novel that i found very satisfying, but others thought was "too much."
but it's not.
you know how infinite jest is like a million different stories all smooshed together in this wicked detailed tapestry with its damaged, unusually-named characters, but each storyline eventually affects the others in surprising ways? this is similar, and stroud even uses a couple of dfw-esque writing flourishes, which is not to say that it is as good as IJ, nor trying to be, but the way the stories react with each other is fun and pleasing and unexpected.
i mean, pay attention, because there are a lot of characters here, and there's that "what is reeeeeal and what is ghoooostly???" thing happening, like in stephen king when he is trying. it is not a difficult book, but it is a fun and spooky read with good momentum and well-written characters.
The books flew open like startled birds trying to escape the flames. One after another I savagely hurled them...more as much as i hated the opening sentences,
The books flew open like startled birds trying to escape the flames. One after another I savagely hurled them into the hottest part of the bonfire, watching them ignite almost before they landed.
**no!! don't burn the bookas!!**
i really liked this book. more than the first one, actually. although they both get four stars because i don't do math. i think this one skews darker than the first one, and builds upon the consequences arising from the first book's events.(tiptoe, tiptoe...) you can't unring a bell, and you can't recapture lost innocence, so it is only natural that the characters have a darker feel to them now, after that first book.
oppel is very good at writing all of the story's elements; the action/horror parts, the sibling relationships, the romantic/rival parts, and the inner turmoil/raw ambition psychological elements.it is a page-turner, but one with real momentum and weight to its story.
he is also good at passing off byron's poetry as the poetry of a different character, with no credit given. what's that all about, oppel?? and later, one of the characters claims, "The place makes us mad, bad, and dangerous to know." please to explain yourself, sir. are we going to see more byron in the future?? properly-attributed? i await my answer.
apart from that, it is a really compelling mystery/action/horror novel with some realistically-written characters and a solid "will there be more...?" ending.
this collection only has eight stories in it compared to the ten in her last collection, so on one hand, i feel cross because i always want more from...more this collection only has eight stories in it compared to the ten in her last collection, so on one hand, i feel cross because i always want more from her, but on the other hand, the stories i liked, i liked a lot. but i'm greedy, and sometimes 8 is not enough.
but they are good, and i liked each story more than the one preceding it. in fact, the only one i wasn't crazy about was the second story,reeling for the empire, which felt like the longest story, but might not have been.
greg snatched this ARC out of my hands before i could read it, when i told him i was only reading spooky books during october, and after he read it, he told me it was spooky enough to fit my self-imposed and very strict criteria, and he allowed me to have it back. and it's true - many of these stories are a little creepy. not scary-scary, but unnerving. don't come here looking for true horror, but there are disquieting elements that are very pleasing.
i don't know if i am supposed to "review" it yet, because it is a long time until it is published, so for now i will just leave this little placeholder of a review, and i will probably go into more detail closer to publication date.
however.
i am hoping that in the published edition, she will have edited the text to include franklin pierce as one of the horses.
and i love how little sense that sentence makes to those of you who haven't read it.
this was great stuff, seriously. i liked Burden Kansas a scootch more because - come on - vampire western, but this one is great and manages to shudde...more this was great stuff, seriously. i liked Burden Kansas a scootch more because - come on - vampire western, but this one is great and manages to shudder the reader with the horrors of "the hoarding lifestyle," compound it with an additional layer of grotesquerie in the form of supernatural parasites, and have it all wrapped up in this short and tightly-packed novel.
loved. it.
because i worry that i am a hoarder, i do. after i read Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things, i had a couple of sleepless nights and some sobering self-examination sessions. to borrow a quote i used in my review for stuff, i have:
piles on sofas and beds that make the furniture useless, homes that have to be navigated by narrow "goat trails", stacks of paper that are "churned" but never discarded...
but it is mostly books, for me. and that's okay, right?? because when i read a book like the hoard, i realize just how much worse it can get, in terms of hoarding. garbage and newspapers and cats and their feces everywhere, plumbing unusable, floors rotted through...i am nowhere near this level. and yet at the same time, i understand this character: raised up poor, learning never to waste anything, finding clever uses for objects other people would see as "junk" because she has had to become creative in her poverty. and it is easy to get out of hand. and ryker manages to make the situation horrifying, but the character sympathetic. and that is tricky business.
like all the best works of horror, this one takes an already-scary situation that we can understand,like hoarding, and adds something to it that makes it even more chilling and awesome - in this case - a creepy parasite that'll get in ya and transform you into a violent host for your new blood-based organisms, and make you wanna burrow down in a warm dark smelly place until you pop and set all your "babies" free.
and he makes it work. i wholeheartedly recommend this author to you if you are looking for something good in the modern horror genre. because i have spent all october reading "spooky" books, and this one is one of the best. i will read anything this guy writes, forever.
woo-hoo!! baby's first netgalley approval!!! now i just have to figure out how to put the magic book onto the reader-thingie. will i be able to master technology?? wait and see!(less)
THERE IS NO SEQUENCE OF WORDS THAT COULD MAKE ME WANT TO READ A BOOK MOR...more
zombies.
werewolves.
armageddon.
that is the tag line along the top of this book.
THERE IS NO SEQUENCE OF WORDS THAT COULD MAKE ME WANT TO READ A BOOK MORE THAN THOSE.
just, wow.
this book is about a seeecret government facility on an island where soldiers are being turned into werewolf (well, actually, dog, but the cover says "werewolves," so i am going to say werewolves because the cover doesn't listen to me when i gently correct it) anyway, so "werewolf" fighting machines. right?? and they battle each other for dominance in this fighting ring and they growl and they spar, but when they turn back into humans, they are pretty nice guys, mostly. OH AND ALSO when they are in dog form, they have super healing abilities which can come in useful.
BUT THEN OH NO ZOMBIES!!! WHO COULD HAVE FORSEEN ZOMBIES?????
so the scientists and administrators have to make a decision. do we send out these dogs to fight the zombies? or do we cower in here and protect our investment?
HOLY SHIT OF COURSE YOU SEND THEM OUT BECAUSE THAT WOULD BE FREAKING AWESOME!!!!
there are many details that i am not going to go into, because you are going to read this book BECAUSE IT IS ABOUT WEREWOLVES (koff - dogs) ATTACKING ZOMBIES!!! AND PEOPLE!! AND EACH OTHER!! OOPS SPOILER ALERT!!!! but not really.
there is a lot of blood. and cage-fighting. and essplosions. and amateur brain surgery. and other stuff like badassery:
"i'm a realist, miss randall. if you show me a glass, i see it as neither half-empty nor half-full. i see enough water to drown a man, if i can find a way to put it in his lungs.
wonderful imagery:
a zombie falls from a greater height onto a surging horde of other zombies "like a crowd surfer at a wake."
ZOMG, and did i mention??
zombie. clowns.
seriously, this book is so much fun. is it the best-written book i have ever read?? welll....no. but it might be the best-written book i have ever read by two people.so stick that in your pie-hole and smoke it.
HOW DID MO YAN WIN THE NOBEL WHEN THIS BOOK EXISTS???(less)
hmm. i should have realized this was the third part of a trilogy before i read this. i have read reviews of this on here before that explicitly stated...more hmm. i should have realized this was the third part of a trilogy before i read this. i have read reviews of this on here before that explicitly stated this, but for some reason, i just blanked that out when i was choosing my books for "october is spooky." this is a perfectly fine self-contained story, but i think i might have felt more connection to it had i read the first two and been better able to connect with the characters from their previous storylines.
so, a cannibal woman happily living on her own terms all half-nekkid in nature, hunting and gathering and eating ummm meat, is captured by a perfect-family-on-the-surface whackjob creep, restrained,imprisoned, tortured, and raped. all - you know, to civilize her.
it is graphic and brutal and as though that weren't enough (it is), there's all sorts of other horrific stuff going on out in the barn with the dogs and in the bedroom with the teenage daughter. if it is making you uncomfortable to read this review, just think what the book is like. you know, like the joke goes:
(view spoiler)[a little boy and a pedophile are walking in the deep, dark, woods. the little boy says,
"mister, i'm scared! these woods are really creepy."
the pedophile replies, "how do you think i feel? i have to walk back all by myself." (hide spoiler)]
this isn't really a book i would feel comfortable recommending to anyone. there are definitely scenes in this that are vile and appalling. but there is also comeuppance. you have to wade through a river of blood and torture in order to get to the comeuppance, sure, but take stock of your personal violence-limits, and if you feel you are up to it, give this a read. i am curious about the first two books, myself, but i will probably wait until next year's "spooky month" to satisfy my curiosity about "how did these people come to this??
She has become ravenous, the way hydrochloric acid depletes your face.
hmmm, experimental horror novels...i'm kind of a giant shrug on this review. the...moreShe has become ravenous, the way hydrochloric acid depletes your face.
hmmm, experimental horror novels...i'm kind of a giant shrug on this review. there are authors who do this style, and do it well, but i have never really been into them, so i feel a little out of my depth. people who are into matthew stokoe or burroughs will probably like this book, and the back cover calls it A Bataille sitcom full of meat and mommies. which could be accurate or could just be a pithy soundbite. (patrick bateman's name is dropped in the same blurb, and i believe this character is the exact opposite of patrick bateman, so i don't know how much trust to put in this comparison to bataille. i've only read story of the eye, so.)
but the book is tricky. it is enamored with offbeat wordplay (see above), and it employs stream-of-consciousness and stilted non sequitur-conversations and unreliable narrators to do all the storytelling. so, after all that layering, i'm not sure how much of the action is "real" and how much are delusions, and how much is metaphor.
"What am i doing here?" she asks. "Solace, perhaps? Kinship? I don't know much about that." "I've got Armageddon in my grips." She holds the dinosaur up to her chest. Her eyes are tired, pretty much super nova to the extreme. "His name is my being," I say. "Did Mom call?" "No, honey." I'm fond of Sylvia's eyebrows because they're a bit mangled. There's something rabbit about her. For a moment, we just lock eyes and there is equilibrium in the world. You see, Sylvia, it happened like this: my life. There it is all for you to see and my heart races. There's urgency in clarity, sort of like scolding a retarded child with a stick simply for being alive. Here for you to see, my daughter, is your father. I am. "Honey," is all i can manage. "For the life of me, I can't think of the right thing to say." She forgives me. I can see this in her complete disregard of my confession. She rolls over, grabs a cig, and lights it. I don't bother to tell her to put it out. "Can i have one?" I ask. She gives me one. I smoke. Incandescence is the beauty of cancer. We share this like we share nothing else. We lie in bed like that, smoking it off, enjoying the release.
so, to me,as someone who is relatively neutral to poetry, this is just a lot of sound and fury. i'm not sure what "super nova" (sic) eyes would be, or what clarity has to do with child-beating, or how cancer is incandescent.
but i also don't understand what i am the walrus is about either, and, to be honest, i don't even like the beatles, which i know leaves me in the minority, so this could resonate with people who are really into more surreal literature. it isn't about what words mean, but how they flow and how they appear typed alongside each other...nah, who am i kidding? i hate that argument, which i have heard before. words mean what they mean. sounding pretty means nothing. there are so many words. find one that work to say what you mean.you can do the surreal and the evocative and still make sense, like beckett.
the father-and-daughter in bed together, "smoking it off, enjoying the release" is no twss accident. there are plenty of incestuous themes running through here. also cannibalism, vampirism, conjoined twins in the role of mystic-sage(s), erotic violence, a fascination with serial killers, autism, both spiritual and literal rebirth, and lots of menstrual blood.
it is strange to me to feel so indifferent to a book that is obviously trying to push all the shock buttons, but there it is. i think someone with a stronger bent towards the surreal grotesque would dig this, but for me, it was taking too many liberties with language, and ultimately undermining its own story with clever stylization.(less)
retellings work best when they pinpoint a lack in the original text; a moment that is ambiguous or a lapse in action where a story could have fallen t...more retellings work best when they pinpoint a lack in the original text; a moment that is ambiguous or a lapse in action where a story could have fallen through the cracks. but for this technique to work, the source material kind of has to remain intact.wide sargasso sea lays out "what led bertha to her attic prison madness??." windward heights asks "what happened during heathcliff's three years away, oh, and what if wuthering heights had taken place somewhere much warmer?" stress of her regard, which is not an adaptation of a book, as such, but an even more ambitious adaptation of the biographies of poets, makes the tumultuous lives and mysterious deaths of the romantics supernaturally explicable. but they all respect the source material. they don't get so carried away by their own perspective that they forget the limitations imposed by their source material. with monster, there is too much rewriting of the original, and it doesn't so much "fill in the pieces" or "reverse the traditional interpretations" so much as it revises the text to suit the author's wishes.
although, i suppose that for this particular text, frankenstein, which is about the overstepping of one's human limitations and trying to play god, this is entirely appropriate. but we all know what happened to victor frankenstein when he meddled out of his depths.
so it is an interesting premise: frankenstein told from the perspective of the "monster." not the newly-created being, but the brain-part of the creation, friedrich hoffmann, who was drugged, accused of murder, and executed by being broken on the wheel. when he is revived, he is in the body of an eight-foot tall monster, while retaining his memory and his humanity.
the thing that makes frankenstein so interesting is its moral ambiguity. victor frankenstein uses science to create life, but then doesn't take responsibility for what he has created. and like many neglected children of indifferent parents, his monster goes wild, seeks love and acceptance from other families,and when they are appalled by his appearance, eventually he goes "bad" and lashes out. but he doesn't start out "evil," and frankenstein himself is not an entirely innocent character. the interesting thing about frankenstein is the dynamic between the creator and the created, and the revulsion and responsibility inherent in their relationship.
it was never a story of good vs. evil.
and this is where zeltzerman's story goes off the rails a little, for me. in his retelling, victor frankenstein is purely evil.and friedrich-monster is a good "man" in an extreme situation. which, fine, if we are just going to take the movie-version of frankenstein: scientist good, monster bad, which steamrolls all the complexities out, and reverse it, this is what we would get. but then... vampire-werewolves? satanists?? orgies orchestrated by the marquis de sade? murals that come to life and depict decadent sexual monstrosities? naked girls as tables? it is like dorian gray at the playboy mansion. and - of course , where would a story like this be without monster cock? you know what they say about eight-foot-tall patchwork reanimated corpses. the ladies cannot get enough...
this would have been more effective if it had been a stricter retelling. frankenstein and his monster do not hang out together in the original. not as friends, not as creator and captive, there is just no period where they are together for an extended period of time.i could deal with friedrich-monster encountering the satanists and the vampires because there is that gap where he is off going wild in the woods and who knows what he is doing?? he could well have been living it up as the king of the satanists - who can say? like heathcliff's missing three years, i could have accepted this filling in of the narrative gap. but i have problems with the rest of it. this is more like frankenstein fanfic - like "frankenstein is good, but what if there were more orgies in it??"
okay, so that might be a little snarky. because there are parts that i liked - the overall tone is fine, as an adaptation; it's not as good as shelley, but it feels similar enough. including real-people like samuel hahnemann and the marquis de sade and shelley herself is also a cute little flourish that i appreciate. i suppose i just have problems with retellings that deviate from the original. which is a personal peeve. oh, and also, the ending. peeve city.
this isn't terrible by any stretch, it was just not as tight of a retelling as it could have been.
okay, this is another book that has such uniformly high ratings that i don't feel bad for being a little critical, even though i do have a soft spot f...moreokay, this is another book that has such uniformly high ratings that i don't feel bad for being a little critical, even though i do have a soft spot for the self-published authors, and i do always try to cut them a little more slack than i ordinarily would.
right off the bat - this book is not bad. but it does have its problems, and i am going to discuss those problems, hopefully in a humorous way. but since i have suddenly made the stgrb posse aware of me by writing them an email about how joe's review of matched is in no way a bullying one, and their calling it bullying is desperate, i assume that any even slightly negative review i write from here on out will probably be posted "somewhere". oh, well. i'm not going to pretend every book is perfect. because not many are.
i saw this book on here a long time ago, and it seemed like it would never become available, but i had it filed away in the brain as "this is a YA zombie adventure book that i shall read someday."
whoops.
this is not YA.
and it is not even really a zombie novel.
it does have zombies, yes, but the things that shape and progress the narrative are not the elements you find in a typical horror/adventure novel. they are the things you find in a romance novel. and that's fine - i am in a romance-novel book club, and an erotica book club, and while i don't usually willingly read within the genre, i am not averse to reading them. but i hate being fooled into reading one when i am rarin' for pure zombie goodness.
again - there are plenty of zombies. there are action sequences and blood and gore and weaponry and all of that, but the middle hundred pages are pure romance, where characters discover feeling,repress feelings, are confused by feelings, reject feelings, reconsider feelings, and have intercourse.
fine. we have identified the novel and called it a romance. i assume i will get some argument on this matter, but i will not bend. the concerns in this novel are more of the interpersonal variety than the survival variety.
so, moving on. this is an e-book, and it falls into the oopsies that less stringently-edited books do: compound words masquerading as separate words, inelegant word-breaks, apostrophe errors, typos - how you react to this depends on how sensitive you are to these things. usually they don't bother me, but i feel i should mention it for the grammar-intolerant. it's just a little sloppy:
The afternoon light coming from a window shines behind me, making my hair look ratty. My dark brown hair has, at some point, become a ratted, matted mess, creating thick dreadlocks falling down my back to my waist.
later "flowers" give a "floral scent" to the air, etc...
although sometimes it is adorable:
They are sitting chickens waiting for slaughter. And who knows what else?
I AM HAVING AN ANIMAL METAPHOR PARTY!! THEY ARE ALL COMING AT ONCE!!! NO, I DON'T THINK IT WILL BE WEIRD, THEY WILL JUST MERGE...
the names in this book kill me: kale, glinda, kansas*??? and rudy as your dreamy male lead??? there is only one rudy, and it is not a sexxy dude:
(although - holy cow - she got gorgeous)
but what is happening here?? do only people with stupid names get to survive zombie apocalypses?? (i am not even going to mention kansas' full name, because that is just... wow)
but it really doesn't matter what kansas is actually named, because she is more often that not called "kan" or "darlin'" or "sunshine", or "suga."which drove me crazy.
this is when i first realized i was in trouble:
Black leather boots under frayed jeans hold a zombie head down as he jerks an arrow out of the skull. His arms flex when he wags gooey bits from his arrows. I can't see his face, but he is tall, much taller than me with broad shoulders and wavy brown hair tied back with a green bandana. His hair shines golden brown as it blows in the wind, caressing the compound bow strapped to his back. A large arrow holster hangs by his side. The hunting bow goes from the back of his knees to a few inches above his head. The biggest bow I've seen, making me think it is custom made. The wind blows in the other direction, and his hair whips across his face. It barely brushes the tops of his shoulders. This guy is locked, stocked, and loaded with a big gun tucked into the front of his jeans.
oh, indeed. still think we are in a horror novel? with all the jerking and flexing and blowing and caressing and big bows?? oh, yeah, and the big gun in the front of his pants. i nearly missed that subtle image.
but this - this is where i almost lost my mind:
"Well, I see yew wakin' up. We have a tawk, yew and me." Again the accent confuses me, most likely from a northern location."Pretty boy came into duh city, told me yew was sick, so I lent dem drugs to yew. Pain killas too. Got's stitches now, yew gotta be careful wit dat. I know da pretty boy from months past. Met him lookin' all like juice head gorilla. He's off seeing to me a fava. But yew gots a few more days, needs dem drugs for two weeks."
writing in vernacular should never be attempted by someone unless they can really make it work.what kind of accent is that supposed to be, anyway?? (incidentally, the character's name is "guido," so i can hazard a guess, but what a mess.) and why, later, repeatedly, should "fuk" be spelled like that? it has the same sound as "fuck." is it just to denote the relative stupidity of the character? like, "man, this person would probably spell that word this way because they are totally dumb and low-class..."
in a related note:
the "asian-american" character is introduced at the same time as "his buddy," the "african-american" character. the "asian-american" is a practitioner of the kung-fu, while the "african-american" character is... ready?? DANCING TO A BEAT IN HIS HEAD, all gold teeth and baggy clothes. he then says "wussup?"it is good to see that the antiquated stereotype store is still in business.
this is a tiny thing, but it is more evidence that we are not in a zombie novel: you get to go through someone's closet to find new clean clothes and you choose a sundress?? no. a thousand times no. you don't need to look good, you need to be able to run and climb and maybe you want some more coverage so that zombie-teeth have to work harder to break your skin. also, as an aside - waist-length dreadlocks are another zombie no-no. yeah, it makes you look all tough and mad max-y or whatever, but a zombie is just gonna use them to reel you in like delicious seafood. good lord, do i have to teach you people everything?
I decided against taking anything, believing we have enough of this stuff anyway.
i never understand this attitude. you know the world has essentially ended, and they aren't making any more of this stuff, right?? this is like that susan beth pfeffer series, where they are all "let's just take what we need right now because i am sure no one else will want these supplies and they will be here forever..." NO! INCORRECT!! usually hoarding is bad, but THIS IS THE END OF THE WORLD, PEOPLE! this is zombie novel rule 101. oh but right - we are in a romance novel. we are all about measuring out the release... the tease.. the slow disrobe. let's not take it all at once.
gain one star for underground zombie sex party. you would think this would lose it a star, but i actually liked this club - where men fight in the ring (yes, this also points to it being a romance novel, as our sweaty male lead fights for dominance under the watchful gaze of our reluctant female),and zombies are chained to pillars and nudely "dancing" in cages for lively decorations.i thought this part was very evocative and not something i have read before. i liked the atmosphere she wrote here, although i personally would never go to one of these places. i am liking it as a reader, not as a "gee, i wish these places existed..."i also liked the tip on "why we mustn't throw molotov cocktails at zombies:
I quickly figure out why this is not a good dea. It only makes the zombies come at you while on fire.
i file that one away for future use.
but, lose one star for letting someone who was bitten by a zombie into your secure bunker.
so, this review is my response to all the 4 and 5-star reviews, which make me sad for not loving it as much as everyone else, but "fine" does not make me give it a 4. unfortunately. not even to an indie.
*which, if you have seen zombieland, should make you wince. particularly when the film is explicitly referenced later. (less)
i am pretty much a fan of any revisionist history that blames human atrocities on monsters. we gotta save face, right, and that's what monsters are fo...morei am pretty much a fan of any revisionist history that blames human atrocities on monsters. we gotta save face, right, and that's what monsters are for, to hang all our shortcomings upon.
the slaughter of innocents for personal gain. oops. but by blaming it on vampires, it takes some of the sting out of it. vampires can't help it - they have an innate need to mutiny and feast. but what happens when these wacky seamen from 1629 mess with some australian teens in modern times? well, you know aussie teens - they aren't going to take that shit, hey?
and i really liked it.
although like Raw Blue, there is almost too much detail about surfing. it's probably something that bookish surfers appreciate, but for the landlubbers among us who havenever willnever surf/ed, the attention to detail is simply mystifying.
apart from that, i thought this was a genuinely gripping vampire story, and i am someone who is rarely interested in vampire fiction.
the mythology was solid, the contemporary characters felt realistic, and i thought the story flowed really well, even though it was not really a quick read. i appreciated the density to it; it never felt that story was being sacrificed to pacing, the way some YA can.
i had a couple of issues with the lurve/relationship elements, but those parts are usually the parts i am enduring to get to the good stuff anyway, so the occasionally bewildering decisions and lack of communication by our characters in their social relationships didn't bother me the way they probably did for some readers.
i was just there for the vampires. and they did not disappoint. they are not feel-good vampires who are looking for a clumsy teen girl to love - these vampires are all about the power and enhancing their immortality. and it is good, good stuff.
it opens with a funeral scene in rural germany - three men and a woman attend the bur...more(now with pictures!)
this book was an easy near-five stars for me.
it opens with a funeral scene in rural germany - three men and a woman attend the burial of a woman; a childhood friend. there is an awkward conversation, sprinkled with resentment and innuendo. at the close of the prologue, the woman triumphantly pisses on the grave.
everyone's got grudges...
what follows is a series of short stories, alternating between the perspectives of all five characters, as they dispassionately recount the horrific (to the reader) childhood experiences occurring in their deliberately insular village of hemmersmoor. they are all told in first-person past-tense, so it is unclear whether they are remembrancing things past as adults, or narrating the stories as children, but i prefer to think that they are told in the voice of a child, self-reflecting; musing on things just-past with only themselves as audience.
kids are scary. you know this, right?
and this village helps to foster the scary. small villages, cut off from the rest of the world make their own rules. here, "murder" is just another word for "justice," and superstition, tradition, folklore, and magic have the power to shape destinies. there will be incest, arson, facial scarring,character assassination, cannibalism, and soul-stealing. just to begin with.
the stories are narrated in a very straightforward, matter-of-fact manner. this is german horror, after all. it is quietly chilling, rather than going for grand gestures. there is casual violence undercutting these stories without any real emotional response. awful things happen, and life goes on. there is an emphasis upon the erasure of the past:
Nobody shed a tear for the youths, and what had happened to the people who had lived in the camp before them, nobody was interested in either. Despite the photo in my living room, despite the vans that had delivered groceries to this other village on a daily basis, and despite the railroad track that led right through it, nobody in Hemmersmoor could say who the people in the camp had been. Nobody remembered the ones who had lived there, slept in the barracks, and died. There had never been such people.
which is probably the scariest thing of all. atrocities should leave emotional scars, but here, their fading is taken for granted, life goes on, murders become barstool anecdotes, and while individuals remember, and will eventually piss on your grave,the community-at-large will have all but forgotten, or consigned your suffering to legend.
this book comes highly recommended from me. a very under-the-skin kind of book that has a true shirley jackson feel, and not just that knee-jerk name-drop that comes when people want to describe literary horror. christian's chapters are particularly good - just complete bland teenage sociopathy. brrrrrr
and i am a little disappointed that i have an advanced readers' copy from ALA. reading the other reviews of this on here, it seems the published book has a feature mine lacks, one which i am going to confirm at work today. watch this space.
**review amended to include deborah's thoughts, because even though we gave it the same amount of stars, i did not do a good enough job reviewing.
"......more**review amended to include deborah's thoughts, because even though we gave it the same amount of stars, i did not do a good enough job reviewing.
"...listen to me - things are different down here. This is the deep South. There are laws that don't apply." "You're an ugly, disgusting people." "No worse than most I'd guess."
and i understand his problems with it - when something is compared to faulkner and flannery o'connor, you have certain expectations as a reader, and while this book definitely borrows the tone of those southern masters, there is something out of control in its narrative that doesn't reach the heights of its own blurbs. and i am giving it a four-star rating, even though i am feeling a high-three. i have read too many three-star books lately, and this one, while frustrating in places, was way better than the others. my star-ratings are always extremely subjective, which is pretty much why i review, so i can work out my feelings.
here are some of my feeeelings:
this book is like a diorama of southern bizarro: conjoined mystical triplets, underage sex grenades (an expression i totally just stole from dan simmons), murder, suicide, pregnant nuns, speaking in tongues, folklore, witch-healers, alligators, white trash catfights, amputations for the good of all, a mysterious carnival, and a main character who lives in this liminal space between reality and ghostly apparitions.
and it's a hoot, but sometimes it gets to be a bit much. it is a tiny book, but it is somehow a slow read, because there is a lot of re-reading necessary. the story is tricksy, and there is never one of those handy "you are here" signs. it reminded me so much of, The Obscene Bird of Night which is a supremely grotesque and convoluted book. greg and maureen have great reviews of it - i read it pre-goodreads, and i do not have the balls to review it now, but if you want to read something completely mind-blowing and possibly vomit-inducing, and which is probably going to confuse the shit out of you, that book would be a good place to start. so having loved obscene bird, and having loved another book by piccirilli, The Last Kind Words, i think i was predisposed to like this one more than krok zero (joel, collect your dollar, even though i think your prediction may have been an insult to me?).
it definitely is not a perfectly-constructed novel; characters come into and out of play, drifting through the scenes just to perform acts of strangeness or discomfort for the benefit of the reader, and there is never really a sense of where the story wants to be going. the reveal of the mystery is a mystery we never knew we were supposed to be looking for, although it almost accidentally solves the riddle of "who is kicking all these dogs??"
and the last quarter of this book is a pretty out-of-nowhere bloodbath.
and yet... i liked it a lot more in thinking over having read it then while i was actually reading it, because now i can see the full scope of it. but i still don't know what it is. it is a noir-magical-realism-ghost-crime story, i guess. but i still don't know what the story is, other than a dark slice-of-life story in which horrible things happen. and i think i will want to re-read it sometime, now that i know where it is going to end up, because i think there were probably a lot of scattered clues throughout that i would appreciate a second time through.
spooky month continues...
but all of that is incorrect!! here is the real review, from deborah:
I thought it was a beautiful and moody read. I think it failed to be truly scary, but it was ugly enough to be interesting. Dreamy and strange.
oh, dan simmons, i wish you had dedicated the terror to me instead of this one. spooky month is not going as well as i had hoped...
this is fine. it is a very straightforward, classic-feeling horror novel,like an early stephen king or something, and i still think simmons is a good writer, but this one just didn't thrill me the way the terror did.
it is at once a psychological horror novel and a traditional-ish ghost story, with some mythology thrown in for spice. it is tricky business, because we have a character who is medicated after a suicide attempt, returning to his hometown and his deceased childhood friend's house to try his hand at an autobiographical novel (ummm, summer of night??)* , and he finds himself isolated in a cell phone dead zone, and facing a triple threat of ghosties, skinheads, and the horror of his own mind and his guiltish memories. so - what is "real" and what is delusion and what is self-punishment? the reader is kept guessing, and it is perfectly readable and page-turning, but it lacked that special "oomph" that would have turned this from a serviceable novel into a shiverlicious one.
i did like all the nerdishness, with the henry james and the beowulf quotes, and all the english-major memories (and how many horror novels have proust in them, sparking a turning point for the character??) it was dorky good times.
but it just wasn't enough for me, i guess. i need something less...expected - i need a horror novel that is going to scare me, but it just never happens for me. i am scared of plenty of real things, but books have to work really hard to give me the bumps.
this would probably scare someone else more than it did me - the dogs in particular - but alas,to a karen, it remains "fine."
* it would have been nice for me to have known that this was a sequel to summer of night, because now i guess i know how summer of night ends up, and now i am less inclined to read it anytime soon, even though it is sitting right there. i see that goodreads has helpfully called this "seasons of horror #2," but the book itself did not. sigh.(less)
it has adventure and whimsy and family dysfunction and bitter betrayals. it is for a middle-grade audience, but an older...morethis is a very charming book.
it has adventure and whimsy and family dysfunction and bitter betrayals. it is for a middle-grade audience, but an older audience can definitely appreciate it.
but for me, it was difficult.
i do not have a strong background in fantasy. invented creatures and words get muddled in my mind - i find it difficult to keep them straight. and as i am typing this, i am realizing that this completely contradicts everything i was saying earlier in a private forum about my brain. here's a rundown:
i have difficulties with aural retention. in school, i had to write down basically the entire lectures, to reread in the privacy of my apartment later. i watch all my movies at home with the subtitles on. when i read things, i retain them better than if i just hear them. this is why i am great to tell secrets to - chances are, i will just forget.the brain, she is porous.
and yet, against all expectations, i have difficulties with reading fantasy novels, with their wacky names and geographies. it is a really good thing that i watched game of thrones before reading it, is all i'm saying. who can tell how to pronounce things? and where are all these places in relation to each other?? oh, cool - opening credit sequence. that's sorted.
this seems counterintuitive, right?, but i think my brain is one of those "floor models" only intended for display, so it doesn't need to be consistent.
all of that to say that i think i would have liked this more if i had a stronger background in fantasy. i truly bemoan my weakness in the genre. and people are always trying to help me with this and i always make promises, and then i just get overwhelmed and i go into rabbit-in-headlights mode. it is a huge stumbling block, and my brain just refuses to wrap around the conventions of the genre.
so for me, the skinks and the shroves and the groats and the swarm and the murk mowl, etc etc - my brain kept balking at unfamiliarity. this is completely a personal shortcoming and in no way the fault of the book.
because it is charming. it is an adventure-y book with a good brother-and-sister team as the standout characters, a distant mother, some eccentric aunts, one scarily-driven cousin,and one who is physically hapless, and a grandmother with a big spooky house and power, and so many family secrets.
also, some great illustrations.
this is the first part of a proposed trilogy, and like all great trilogies, it leaves off in a complete cliffhanger, so be prepared to be left hanging, tantalizingly.
so, as long as you are better at, you know, reading than i am, you should add this to the virtual "to-read" pile.
and then come back and tell me how dumb i am.(less)
hmm, so as far as the "look at me, i am taking the 'zombie' novel to new and interesting places" angle goes, i think this book delivers. but it is def...more
hmm, so as far as the "look at me, i am taking the 'zombie' novel to new and interesting places" angle goes, i think this book delivers. but it is definitely a more subdued and reflective novel than the two that came before it. and that's fine, but it is not helping out my "spooky spook month" very much.
because, hey, i am all about the maturation of the zombie novel: Zone One, Raising Stony Mayhall, and The Reapers Are the Angels are all fine examples of novels that are and are not books about zombies, and which elevate the genre into more sophisticated terrain.and this is, technically, not a zombie novel because it is not about the undead, but about a plague whose symptoms are divisive; that pits the infected against the unchanged, so it boils down to the same line-drawing between what is "human" and what just used to be human. but the first two books in this trilogy, from what i remember, were more action-based, and i was hoping for a conclusion that was in keeping with the tone of those, rather than a self-searching novel about humanity and power struggles and social morality and justice etc.
as a stand-alone novel, i think i would have liked this more: a bleaker-than-bleak picture of humanity whittled down to its breaking point after a game-changing event, where individuals must re-establish social codes and re-evaluate just how important the social element of society is, and if there is any place for it under the new reality, or if the needs of the individual supersede whatever ingrained community-feeling keeps trying to re-assert itself.
it is interesting, but only occasionally bloody, and parts one and two made me anticipate more "bloody rarrrr",less "thinky hmmmmm".
i think if one were to read just this book, without any expectations, most would love it. i just don't think it was a "fair" way to end the trilogy.
i guess i am someone who reads short stories. it's what i do now. so, to celebrate the short, i am going to make this review a series of pithy one-sen...morei guess i am someone who reads short stories. it's what i do now. so, to celebrate the short, i am going to make this review a series of pithy one-sentence... summaries? commentaries? of/on each story. this is not me being lazy; it is actually quite difficult. especially with stories like these, which frequently have little twists in them that i want to avoid destroying. so some of these sentences might even be misleading, a little. who knows, i haven't written it yet. come with me on my tiny journey.
query
some publishers will work harder for you than others.
gaytown
sorry, kids, apparently it actually doesn't get better.
home
obsession and paranoia in space just makes it hard on everyone.
assassination and the new world order
congratulations on being elected; now watch your fucking back.
i realize now that this was probably a bad idea, and this "review" is too reductive to give any sense of the true impact of the stories, and it makes it all sound a little silly. but i'm not good at covering my tracks when i make mistakes, so i'll just plow on into an overview of the collection. most of it was great - i wasn't crazy about the sci-fi/military ones, but that's a me vs. genre thing. these are highly original and stunning stories about the destructive force of love and obsession and the horrible decisions we make while in their throes. i think the only one i didn't like at all was shika. there were some that were okay, but the ones i loved i really really loved, so this was a more successful collection than most, and considering it took me almost two years to be able to get it into the store, i would say it was definitely worth waiting for.
i have got to stop reading mediocre books. this was my second in a row, and it is making me cranky.
i am trying to only read spooky books for october,...more i have got to stop reading mediocre books. this was my second in a row, and it is making me cranky.
i am trying to only read spooky books for october, and i thought this would be a good place to start. (it is also my first YA book in a month - did you miss me, YA publishing industry?)
but then i remembered: i don't find ghosts particularly spooky. and the ghost in this one is more of the casper the friendly helpful ghost variety rather than the "boo, i'm gonna getcha" kind. the people in this book are much spookier than the ghosts. (view spoiler)[ seriously - what grown woman drowns kittens as a "haha i don't like you" prank? (hide spoiler)] the beatings, the locking in the cellar, that i understand. while it is repugnant, it is something that is accepted as a means of punishing fellow-servants. (view spoiler)[drowning kittens (hide spoiler)], and then hiding so you can see a fourteen-year-old girl's reactions to (view spoiler)[a bucketful of drowned kittens (hide spoiler)] is crazyland on ice.
as a historical page-flipper, it is fine. this is probably totally appropriate for a younger-than-teen audience (view spoiler)[unless the reader likes kittens (hide spoiler)]. but that's really just one brief sentence in an otherwise pretty safe book. get a sharpie, you'll be fine.
the historical element was good - there is enough detail included that it feels authentic (sorry, ceridwen), and it gives a good sense of the hierarchy within the servant-world.
but overall, i gotta say "meh." it's fast and fine for the kiddies, but i don't see this one crossing over into adult readership. and nor should it - teenagers put "keep out" signs on their bedroom doors for a reason.
and dana! i have just read TWO BOOKS IN A ROW in which there are amputations. how you like me now?(less)
if anyone popped into my RA group looking for a book that was "not well-written, consistent, or plausible," i could hand them this book with full conf...more if anyone popped into my RA group looking for a book that was "not well-written, consistent, or plausible," i could hand them this book with full confidence.
and i feel bad for saying that, i do. this book means well, you can tell. the author dedicated it to his best friend erin. that's cute, right? but about thirty pages in, i started getting concerned that this was another YA book actually written by a teen author. i am not going to have another truancy experience, thank you very much. but no, not a teen, just the brother of dan wells, who i still have yet to read, but seems like a really nice guy.
so this is why i feel bad for hating on this book, because the brother of the author has always been nice when he has come in. that makes perfect sense, right? also, i write my least convincing book reports when i am ill. but these are the cards we were dealt today.
so, seventeen-year-old benson fisher applies for a boarding-school scholarship program in order to get out of the foster-care system cycle he has been swirling around inside for years.he gets it - yayyy - and flies off to new mexico to settle into his new school and meet his new classmates. but oh no! where are the teachers? where are the adult cafeteria and maintenance workers? why are all the children shouting? so, basically - this is a school in which all the duties of the school are performed by the students themselves. please hold your questions until the end. so there are three groups, groups that have formed out of necessity, after some unpleasantness in the past, when the students had been just fending for themselves. and by unpleasantness, i mean many many deaths. this being YA fiction, the groups have suitably goofy names: the society- who play by the rules, havoc - who wear thuglife pendants and like to fight, and the variants - who would like to escape, but are very pragmatic and would like a color-coded escape plan first, please. for safety's sake. (which group do you think benson aligns himself with? i give you a hint and point you towards the title of the book) so, each of these groups perform certain functions in the school, based on agreed-upon and bidded-for contracts. havoc is in charge of food and groundskeeping, society handles admin, nursing, teaching, variants clean up the trash, but all are ruled by a tv screen that depicts an adult face giving out daily punishments, after reviewing the tapes culled from the numerous video cameras and microphones all around the school. and if you get detention, you never come back.... shhhh - questions at the end, please!the lessons are arbitrary lectures on aesthetics or field surveying, and they play a lot of paintball, and points are accrued all around so they can buy clothing and other gear, but never.... their freeeeeedom. so it is shades of ender's game, shades of lord of the flies, shades of any other of the recent batch of YA dystopia where kids form little white gangs and adhere to bizarre group standards in order to show that they are independently minded freethinkers - hey! hands down! and there are ample excuses as to why the kids were chosen, why they can't just call for help or use the internet, or escape over the wall, why they don't just... stop.
okay - now time for questions.
okay, so i just wrote out a string of like 20 questions, but ended up deleting them all because they would probably be too spoilery, for those of you who are interested in reading this, despite my warnings. because it still looks like a book i should like. greg brought it to me at work, saying just that, "this looks like a book you would read." and i did read it. and it was bad. and i am glad i borrowed it rather than buying it, because i was about to buy it, actually. but now i can bring it back. and maybe the person who reads it next will love it, and i would be pleased to hear it. i just hate it when i dislike a book that looks like it means well. it tried, right? especially when it went nuts there at the end and decided to try something "new," and everyone went "whaaaaa??" and then laffed. baffling. truly baffling.
but i will allow this one question - why are YA novels always structured this way, where characters huddle together in like-minded groups instead of utilizing the strengths of all participants? does no one see how this limits the resources? it is a structure that only works if the book is well-written enough to overcome its own inherent silliness. divergent was, i thought, fantastic, even though it had a lot of its own foolishness to overcome. this one tripped over its own foolishness, and then stumbled down a hill, caught on fire, and then just smoldered there.in a not-very-sexy way.
now i am going back to bed. i wouldn't say this book gave me this surely-fatal illness, but i'm also not ruling it out. (less)
i have learned nothing from horror movies. i have fallen victim to the most elementary trap. never, ever think you are out of danger. never say things...morei have learned nothing from horror movies. i have fallen victim to the most elementary trap. never, ever think you are out of danger. never say things like "phew, i'm glad that didn't happen etc etc" i have said this.
(view spoiler)[ so all the shit i said in my review for feed about how refreshing it was to have a relationship like george and shaun's, where they were so very close for a brother and sister, and NEARLY dangerously close but how glad i was that that line was never crossed and how it made me feel like some cynical old biddy with a dirty mind to even have had the thought cross my mind. well. harrumph. you think once a character has been KILLED OFF, you will see the end of that particular danger. but no. and yeah yeah they are not ACTUALLY related, but shaun constantly refers to her as "my sister." as though he is reminding us. as though he is sticking it to us when really he is sticking it to... oh, dear. (hide spoiler)]
so the lesson to be learned is - you are never out of the woods.
however - despite THAT THING I DISCUSSED IN THE SPOILER, this book was more fun than the first one.the stakes were higher, there was a good mixture of dramatic and action-y sequences, and it really moved the characters further into their situation, rather than succumbing to the bloated, "filler-feeling middle novel of a trilogy" syndrome.
although the ending... yes, it is a "cliffhanger," and at first, i was like "yyyyyayyyyyy!" and then i stopped to think about it, and i was more like "hey, wait a second, no." because up until that point, the book had been very respectful, i thought. this may surprise you, but i am no virologist. and for the most part, when this book starts talking all smart about science, i just bat my eyes and look all cute and assume the author has done their research. and i have to admit that what she's imagined here, as a potential danger - sounds convincing. i am on board. also on board with miniaturizing bulldogs to be the size of cats. emphatically on board with that, by the way.less so with what happens in the epilogue and first chapter teaser for book three. unless there is as much convincing science-y sounding detail to satisfy all my "waaaaaait"s, i will remain disappointed by the turn. but also unreasonably elated, because (view spoiler)[i missed george. real-george, not shaun-head george (hide spoiler)]
but overall, i really liked this book. the action was genuinely gripping, and i like the secondary characters a lot. shaun is kind of a tool, unnecessarily antagonistic over very natural human responses to situations, very one-note, (view spoiler)[hey, shaun, do you miss george?? i miss her, too. she was less adolescent. why don't you go punch something? (hide spoiler)] but i thought this was a solid follow-up, and i am definitely going to read the next one, and even go so far as to track down the (shudder) online stories that people are telling me about.
and this book marks the end of "zombie month 2011". or "zombie three weeks 2011," which is less catchy.(less)
jesus christ, but colson whitehead can write. i read the intuitionist way back when everyone was praising it to the moon as the masterpie...more AHHHHHHHH!!!
jesus christ, but colson whitehead can write. i read the intuitionist way back when everyone was praising it to the moon as the masterpiece of the next great american writer, but that book didn't really do a lot for me, while this one keel-hauled me.
it was strolling along at a solid four stars until the ending, which just reached in-between my ribs with insistent fingers and squeezed and squeezed and squeezed. the last 100 pages or so just blew me away. and it's not even a long book, 259 pages, but it took me three days to read; partly circumstantial, partly because unpacking his sentences takes a really long time. this man is the master of the dense sentence. and also at creating these descriptive arabesques of imaginative digression: speculations about characters that do not exist in the novel as such, but are representative of a type of person who might still be existing in this post-infestation world and what that type of person might be doing, thinking, even though they are only a subjunctive character in a three-sentence authorial daydream. who bothers to do that? it is madness! but a madness that stands out as a truly original technique of an incredible writer.
this is both not at all a zombie book and the purest zombie book i have ever read. it is so hard to describe it. i am going to have to read it again, because circumstances muddied up the first half of the book for me a little. part of that is that i really feel this book should be read with as few breaks in the reading as possible. there are so many details, many of whose significance do not become apparent until much later - it is best to read with full attention, in as straight a sitting as you can manage.
ceridwen's review is probably the best review i have ever read. not just for this book, but ever. i would love to review her review, but i don't think i am even savvy enough to articulate how perfect that review is, never mind trying to discuss this book. i love this part best: Then there is the New Yorkiness of this book, a resident recounting his mixed irritation and affection for the cityest of American cities, carefully prodding nostalgia that at any moment might stir and bite. And when it does, put it down with a bullet. that is a perfect encapsulation of this book. whitehead takes the danny hoch stance of "gee, new york (brooklyn, for hoch) is really changing" and ramps it up with fury. and yet - it is new york, and always will be, no matter how many trust fund babies move in, no matter how many buildings have their outsides gentrified or mirrored, no matter how many zombies cross over into it from new jersey. whitehead's final panning shot of the zombies is a masterful and familiar descriptive passage, despite being utterly horrifying. this is new york, warts and all.
it's a very emotional book, despite a main character who is more a bundle of instinctual calculations than emotions. even before the events, he is someone who carefully gauges what he can get away with, what he can do to pass through life with the least resistance, rather than someone who is experiencing life as a series of emotional occurrences. a coaster. so, in many ways, the perfect observer, the perfect survivor. and yet - the surroundings are definitely meant to inspire an emotional response, even to non new-yorkers. new york is a microcosm to the world, after all, the corroded melting pot. and this situation, eyeballed by this character - the extraordinary translated by the mediocre - is made all the more haunting for it.
now i understand the whitehead hype.
aside: i was actually in tribeca on tuesday, where the action of this novel takes place, and i could not help superimposing the narrative upon the scenery - the nearness to halloween didn't hurt matters. but yeah, a terrible part of town to try to withstand a zombie apocalypse. and, to ceridwen, i understand your bristling at the midwest barb - there was a little one for queens, too. why i oughtta!
three stars - look at me!! i am right in the middle of the road with this one!! watch out for traffic, karen!!!
i wanted to read this as soon as it cam...morethree stars - look at me!! i am right in the middle of the road with this one!! watch out for traffic, karen!!!
i wanted to read this as soon as it came out. i think i bought it the week we got it into the store. but, you know how i roll, this was just sitting around for ages and ages in a stack by the door. and then i heard that it was amaaaazing. and then i heard that it was terrrrrible. and etc etc.
and it wasn't until zombie month 2011 that i managed to see for my damn self.
and for me, it was good but i have no choice but to rate it in terms of the other zombie books i have read thus far. it was way better than dust and frail, but not as good as the reapers are the angels or raising stony mayhall. so we gotta go with a solid and respectable three. fair is fair, after all.
i loved the characters in this book, i gotta say. george and shaun are both such damaged and driven people. and i was so relieved that grant didn't go where it looked like she wanted to go with their characters. she was toeing the line there for a while, and i was rolling my eyes and giving her warnings, but she never toppled over into 'ick' territory, and that made ME feel like the creep for seeing things that weren't there. i shake my fist at you, ms. grant, but appreciate that you made their relationship so exceptional without making it exceptionally gross.
also great is the world building. it is dense with details and mostly reasonable; on the one hand the virus' transmission or "activation" is really cool. and not something i have seen before. so - nicely done there. on the other hand - does anyone remember the dandy warhols today, in 2011?? i don't think anyone in 2040 will be remembering them. there is nostalgia, and then there is just foolishness. but other than that, i enjoyed the details that were original and specific to this particular zombie world. that is always my favorite part of these kinds of books: what the author is contributing to the mythology that is unique to their story.
the only reason i didn't like this as much as the two books that i really loved is because it is more of a traditional zombie story - an action story with political cover-ups and a central mystery and numerous action sequences. the books i found particularly great were more tricksy in the way they used the zombies. but that doesn't mean i am not going to read the second one. or the e-book short stories.
i am curious to see where she takes the story, now that THE THINGS THAT HAPPENED IN THIS BOOK HAVE HAPPENED. is my version of dancing around spoilers. all i know is that i liked this book, and even though i had to write some damn paper in the middle of it, which made my house look like this for a week or so:
(which looks totally cluttered, but is actually very carefully arranged.), i still was very interested in getting back to this book, and it was easy to fall back into its world when i needed a break from academia. i am going to read the second part later in the week, and then i guess wait patiently for the third part.
as a bonus, here is a picture of my cat in a drawer.
man, i have lost the knack for writing book reports. i all dizzy from learning. who wants to read a paper about readers' advisory?
warning: this is totally going to be phoned in. school has me by the balls right now, so i am pretty distracted. i suppose if i cared more about this...morewarning: this is totally going to be phoned in. school has me by the balls right now, so i am pretty distracted. i suppose if i cared more about this book, i would make the effort, but it was only just okay, so it gets an only just okay book report.
this is part 2 to the book Dust. i imagine there will be more written after this, as it ends on an action-ellipsis. the main character is a human, a "frail", one of the few remaining after the action in the first book where zombies took over, then zombies and most humans fell victim to a different contagion that left zombies near-indestructible and humans like zombies. but there are different ranks of zombies: those who were already dead and became zombified in the grave, zombies becoming so after dying from a zombie attack, zombies who were just humans succumbing to the other contagion... but none of them eat people. which takes the fun out of the zombie book, you ask me. it's a new kind of monster, but they are more like gods on earth than flesh-eating monsters who will attack you at the mall.
and as such they are less interesting.
so this frail meets up with the sister of the protagonist in the first book, who was the first human-turned-zombie-through-(view spoiler)[lab experiment (hide spoiler)], and they end up getting captured and kept in this town where zombies are basically the jailers-town council and humans are their pets/worker ants/mistresses. but there is still tension. and seeecrets.
stony mayhall featured zombies who were not in attack-mode, either. in that world, the infection leaves its victims in attack-living-human mode for a time, and then subsides into a more socially-acceptable undead state. and that book is great - it doesn't need to be all bloody-mawed and reaching. this book is trying to be a horror novel still, but with defanged zombies. oh, there is still violence, there is still bloodshed. in fact - that is what this author is particularly good at: the gross-out. in both books, there was all kinds of bodily fluids and stenches and detailed descriptions of the breakdown of the body and how bugs contribute to that etc etc. she's got a great sense of that. but the rest of it is just muddled.
i know i still have questions about things that happened in the book, but already, it is quickly fading from my mind. maybe as a result of my preoccupation with school, or maybe because this was just a passing entertainment, nothing that is going to revolutionize the zombie genre (although it is certainly trying). it's october - read a zombie book or two, but maybe read a different one first.(less)
zombie novels are usually about other things, where the zombies/zombie situation is just standing in for whatever larger theme, whatever personal poli...morezombie novels are usually about other things, where the zombies/zombie situation is just standing in for whatever larger theme, whatever personal political or social point the author wants to make. zombies are a conveniently adaptable menace: the fluidity of their ontology, the mechanics of their movements and behaviors: fast or slow? sentient or no? brain eating or no? zombies suit the needs of many different authors to many different ends.
this book is no different. it is zombie novel as "what is human?" philosophy, zombie novel as deconstruction of theology. a whole new revision of the mythology with new alliances and new abilities and a deeper meditation on family and loyalty, and a redrawing of the lines where "survival" meets "fittest."
it has richly-drawn characters both living and formerly-living, and some really memorable sequences. it is a great twist on the genre.
and let me just get it out of the way one second: zombie zombie zombie! i am getting tired of these books telling me that "zombie" is a racist term. i have never been known for any pc sensitivties, and i'm not about to start being all cautious for the sake of mythological creatures...
even really appealing ones like stony mayhall. a zombie born to an infected mother, who does the unheard-of and grows into a man. a zombie man.zzzzzzombie.
but to the world at large - a cipher. what does it mean for the future of humanity, if this near-indestructible man can exist in our world - without needing to breathe or eat, without being able to bleed, with moderately regenerative capabilities? as a spokesperson for the undead, you can't get much better.humans - you are inadequately suited for survival in comparison.
i really liked this thinkier addition to the genre, although i still have some questions about a couple of confusing plot points. maybe i was reading too carelessly, switching back and forth between this book and peer-reviewed articles such as readers advisory: a community effort? and rediscovering the history of readers advisory service wheeee so i may have been too scattered, but i do not understand how (view spoiler)[stony's growth was tied to kwang's, unless it was just a foreshadowing of his ability to extend his body etc, i should probably go reread that part. (hide spoiler)]
but except for some confusion which was probably my own damn fault, and some times when the story got a little too bogged down in the cerebral for too long without any breaking-up-the-pontificating action sequences, this book was really quite good.not a horror novel, not by any stretch, but definitely a thought-provoking novel.i thought the whole thing was very tastefully and intelligently done, and there were still times when i laughed out loud. so a good mix of responses, all from me.
book two of "october is zombie month" was so much better than book one. sooo much better.
i was intrigued by this book, until i read mike reynolds' de...morebook two of "october is zombie month" was so much better than book one. sooo much better.
i was intrigued by this book, until i read mike reynolds' devastatingly negative review of it, and it got shunted to the mental back burner. but eventually i remembered that i am not as smart as mike reynolds, and i am content with playing with little glass paperweights refracting in the sunlight while giggling, so i read it. and i loved it.
(see, pretty!)
but it's good - i lovingly thumb my nose at the negative reviews. and then duck.
this isn't a YA novel, although many people on this site have decided it is. and that's fair - the protagonist is fifteen, and the pacing matches that of a YA novel. but my barnes and noble overlord classifies it as adult, and we all know they would never make a classification error. so let's call it an adult novel so as not to scare off the old stuffy types, and the rest of you, i will just "shh, yeah, i know."
and i have to admit, i have only read one flannery o'connor book (for shame!!) although i have seen wise blood because, well, duh:
but so as far as the "derivative" accusations go, i am as clean-wooled as a baby lamb. but i plan on reading more of her soon, i swear.
this is basically the kind of book i love - the gothic-western justice-novel, but with some supernatural spice. it is more or less true grit with zombies. temple speechifies in roughly the same biblical manner - with a mixture of retributive old testament and a soft sticky center of love thy (deserving) neighbor, jesus-style; a mixture of poor grammar and poetic resonance. i love her character. she is eminently capable, running from her past and her mistakes which haunt her way more than any slow-shambling zombies, which act more as set-pieces than as any real threat.it is fairly episodic, and the basic theme is about the path to forgiveness and redemption, and the progression of that kind of grieving, healing process, but let's not forget, there are also zombies, so it isn't all whiny mitch albom stuff.
what is great about this book is that temple was born into this world. she has never known a world without desolation, without monsters, without danger or the necessity of moving on. she is unattached and detached, but retains some inherent glimmer of humanity that constitutes her own moral compass. and it is gorgeous to watch a girl operate under the weight of her guilt and the necessity of her survival instincts. she does not take any shit, but she is not without empathy. nor without understanding of other people's personal moral code, even as it works against her.
also great is that, starting the way this one does, in the waning years of an infestation, we do not have to read any boring scenes where people have a slow dawning realization of the situation. we are thrust into a world that is, not that is becoming.
i love it i love it i love it.
it is exactly what i needed to be reading - a "horror" novel that has more depth than just "braaaaains," one one whose themes are smack in my area of interest. plus, tom franklin (my new love in life) blurbed this puppy.
and it turns out, this guy is married to megan abbott, who i have been meaning to read for forever. (less)
it is october.i am going to read a bunch of zombie books. this is the first.
and it was very okay. by now, she has written a sequel, and i am hoping th...moreit is october.i am going to read a bunch of zombie books. this is the first.
and it was very okay. by now, she has written a sequel, and i am hoping that she has gotten her mythology tightened enough to allow her plot a narrow strait through which to flow, because the major problem with this one was trying to understand the rules; they seem awfully fluid and she frequently neglects to address the big picture.
quickly: so in this book, zombies can communicate with each other in a way that does not require tongues and lips and etc, but is more like a telepathic communication, and a resting state that sounds like music. okay, fine. and they dance, collectively, ritualistically, when some inner switch is thrown and they feel a compulsion. ooookay, that's fine, i am very much of the "take what you are feeling and dance it" state of mind. sure. next. even though humans ("hoos") are aware of the possibility/probability of the undead, people are still buried when they die, just "away" from civilization, even though these zombies are fast enough to catch deer and other woodland creatures. huh? were i in charge of this land, everyone would be cremated to avoid the possibility of them coming back to eat me, but i'm not - joan frances turner is, and i will go along with her rules. all of them, even if they seem silly and inconsistent.
and many are. i don't even want to go into all of them here.
but there is enough that is new and intriguing in the zombieverse to make me want to keep reading. what if there was a disease that struck, and affected both humans and zombies alike? and it made humans sick and made them resemble zombies, but it made zombies (oh, and i am apparently falling prey to a huge taboo here, as "zombie" is considered a racist term. but i am using it as a reclamation, i am writing a zombie rap song) but it made the undead stronger. regenerate. not need to eat living flesh. and that is a great twist on the living dead mythos. where do we go from here? oh, many places, each a little odder than the last. beaches, stones, death, second death, third death...no time to explain, just keep up and keep reading.
but what about..?? oh, i guess it doesn't matter. hmmm.
if this review is scattered and unclear, i think a bit of it can be blamed on the book. it meanders, and there are about three different ending points, each more confusing than the last. i need to read the sequel, because i need to know the further-reaching ramifications of what is happening here, if she even bothers to address them. i am not positive she will, because she seems to have left many obvious questions unanswered, but...
this sounds like a negative review, but the book is fun to read, i am just trying to understand why the story is so loose and shambly and lacking in perspective.i like the idea of this mythology, i like the surface of it with the itching bugs and the pro-undead solidarity,i like knowing what happens when a vegan becomes a zombie, but it really needs to have more depth, overall.
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