Julie
Although only a few pages long, I found this report to be absolutely chilling. Matthew Hopkins was the Witchfinder general and seems to have been absolutely convinced of the righteousness of his cause. The question seem to have been put to him and these are his answers. This was a real man, with a real conviction. Horrific.
This was my third time reading ‘The Passage' and I still enjoyed it as much as the first time. I'm not quite sure why that is.I'm a sucker for survival stories, anyway (if you'll excuse the pun), so that is already a huge plus.
Blood-sucking vampire super-soldiers - virals - created by man, have made the human race all but extinct. There are just a few pockets of humanity trying to survive. After almost one hundred years of terror the virals' behaviour starts to change. They realise they have nearly exhausted their food supply and they have to reduce the attacks on the survivors giving them time to multiply but also giving them time to fight back.
On the surface this is a horror story about survival but it is more than that. It is a tale of love in all its forms: husband and wife, parent and child, brother and sister. Each time I read it I see more and that for me makes a cracking good story.
This is a book of its time and pulls some punches I feel. It's far too soft in my opinion not really exploring the horrors that a nuclear war world bring with it. I can see how it would have made an impact at the time it was written but by today's standards it seems almost superficial. I enjoyed reading it, if enjoyed is the right word for it, but having been written in the 1950s it has it's issues. It tackles attitudes towards race in the south but not so much a woman's place! Books like this always make me wonder how much worse-off we'd be nowadays in the same situation given our total dependence on technology. Worth the read but not a page-turner.
I think the cover of this book first attracted my attention to it while browsing in my local bookstore. It stuck out from the crowd so I read the blurb and took it home with me (after paying for it, of course). It's a kind of medieval road movie with a bit of murder and mystery thrown in. Actually, there is quite a lot of murder and mystery in there but it doesn't really start until the second half of the book. The story is told by one person who, at the start of the story, is on a pilgrimage to a sacred shrine (I can't remember which one but it isn't that important). At each stop on the way, our narrator manages to pick up more and more travellers who are, for one reason or another, fleeing their past. The pilgrimage becomes a flight for everyone as the Black Death arrives in England and rapidly catches up with our band of frightened travellers. And then the murders begin...
I had to start this book twice, the first time I was in the middle of moving house so I couldn't get into it. But once I had picked it up the second time, I couldn't put it down again until I had finished it. So what did I like about it apart from the eye-catching cover? Well, I liked the beginning, which was actually describing the end of the book without giving anything away. I liked the fact that each new member of the group seemed to manage to worm their way into it, despite the wish of the pilgrim to travel alone. I liked that every single one of them had a secret which kept you guessing through most of the book. The descriptions were sufficient to set the scene but not so much as to get in the way. And the ending was almost ‘Hitcockian' - predictable (yes, that was the authors intention) but still quite chilling.
What didn't I like about it? Well..hmm...I don't think there was anything.
This book is well worth the time if you like stories about the Middle Ages and the Black Death as well as murder mystery. I went on to read “The Owl Killers” on the basis of this book and will pick up her next two without further ado.
A bunch of ordinary people stuck in a tin can below the surface of the moon, battling one catastrophe after another, what is not to love? This is one of my favourite books and I can read it time and again, as indeed I have. So it seems a little dated? That is ok, after all it was written 53 years ago. If you ask me, it has stood the test of time pretty well. I read a review in which the reviewer considered it to be sexist - well, I don't agree. Put it in the context of the time it was written, it is remarkably forward thinking. There may not be any female scientists in the story but I can live with that, there still aren't as many as there should be in real life today. There are no aliens, monsters or zombies - just fine dust, trying to overcome them at every corner. Great fun.
I Feel Stupid This book definately belongs on the same shelf as Vellum, Splinter and Fairyland for me. The shelf should be titled ‘Books I Just Don't Get'. I don't think of myself as being particularly dumb but this one went WAY over my head!. I can follow the very basic plot of the book but the meat of the story was just strange. Never mind. I would like to try another of the author's books but that probably won't be anytime soon.
A week later...
Right, so, I've revised my rating for the book because I have had time to think about it and understand what it was that bothered me. I understood the plot and the coming-together at the end, in other words, the basic storyline, which was really good. What I didn't get was the significance of the individuals' stories inside of Diana Hunter's head. I understood the overall significance of the individual characters themselves as part of the whole but their stories threw me. Maybe, I will reread it one day, now that I know what to expect and it will make more sense to me.
This book was disappointing. I'm used to books going over my head and that doesn't usually detract from my enjoyment but I have to say that the final reveal in this one just did not make sense to me. Maybe I drifted off at a critical point but why did the aliens need actual hatches to communicate, it isn't like they used them themselves? And where did the power for the first hatch come from. I know the hatches were powered by the enegy released by the end of time but did this mean that they had to wait for the end of time to build the first hatch? Surely they would have been dead then? Also it seems like the author had too many characters and didn't know what to do with them once they had served their purpose
Not my favourite Baxter. Pity.
I started reading this a few days ago but put it down again in favour of my library books. I picked it up again yesterday because I didn't have another book right there and finished it in one sitting. I didn't expect to like it as much as I did. It follows the very different fates of several characters who all decide to take a DNA test to find ‘the One', their guaranteed partner for life.I just thought it was a brilliant idea although it was a little predictable in some places but that didn't detract from my enjoyment.
A Container Full of Naked Vikings, What's Not to Love? After discovering why magic died out in 1951, governments all over the world are trying to bring it back to their own advantage. Not to be left behind, the American government gets together a rag tag bunch of people to work on the problem. They succeed but find out that manipulating time isn't as easy as they thought...
This book was just fun. Yes, it has obvious flaws (in detail as much as in pc) but looking past those it is just a fun romp through history with lots of interesting characters. Not to be taken seriously.
Doctor Faraday is a physician called out to a patient in an old run-down Georgian house in the summer of 1947. The patient is a young servant girl with a wild imagination. The family is from another world, a world of glamour and money and condescension, a world which disappeared with WWII but the family are desperately trying to hold on to. The strain begins to show when a fire mysteriously starts in in one of the bedrooms, strange noises are heard through the walls and ceiling and the family discover marking scratched in the paintwork.
As a haunted house mystery I found this didn't work too well, there wasn't enough tension and spookiness. What did work was reading it as a psychological study of a disappearing class in a world they no longer recognised. After WWII the welfare state had a huge impact on Britain, touched on here by the building of council estates and the introduction of the NHS. At the same time nobody wanted a ‘lord of the manor' anymore and the gentry were being forced to sell off their land bit by bit just to keep their heads over water. The detail used in the story lets the reader feel the strain the family are under and I was totally engrossed although sometimes the story felt a little slow. I like the ambiguous ending and the question of how much Doctor Faraday himself was involved in the destruction of the Ayres family.
Spiders in Space I bought the book based on the blurb thinking I had an idea of what the story was about. Well...I wasn't entirely wrong but had I known it was partly about a race of giant, intelligent spiders I probably wouldn't have picked it up because a) I really can't stand the beasts and b) it would have sounded too ridiculous for my taste. However, I started to read it and once I realised what was going on I somehow wanted to find it silly but I couldn't, I got entirely drawn in. The civilisation building was amazing - I'm always in awe of someone who can imagine something like that. It did drag a little in places but I think that was just because I wanted to find out what was going to happen. When it came to the show-down I couldn't decide who I wanted to win. It felt like a mixture of Doctor Who's Planet of the Spiders mixed with The Face of Evil episodes (yes, I am a Doctor Who fan) add some Rama to it and finish it all off with Kim Stanley Robinson's Aurora and still it had a flavour all of its own. Fantastic!
This was a reread. The last time I read it was about 20 years ago so it wasn't exactly fresh in my mind but it was surprising how familiar some parts of it were after all these years.
The story is set in the mid 1970s and is about 18 year old Eva Martin who gives up her family and her childhood to train for her dream of becoming a prima ballerina. Just as she reaches her goal she collapses and is diagnosed with cancer. She shares her room in the clinic with Claudia, a 26 year old loud mouth who has been in and out of remission for years. The young women seem to be opposites in every way but they strike up a friendship that helps them through the trials ahead.
From the summary of the story the book sounds like sentimental twaddle but in fact it is raw depiction of a cancer patient who is given only months to live. The story is based on experiences in the author's own life and is written as a kind of memoir. I don't know if the book was ever translated into English.
I really, really enjoyed this book, until... I want to give this story more than three and a half stars but hand on my heart, I just can't. The first 4/5 of the book were brilliant with twists and turns that I didn't see coming but then the whole thing turned into a cheesy romance. In some ways the ending was appropriate to the gothic romance style of the story but I felt the final few pages deserved something better. Whereas the rest of the story took unexpected turns the ending was entirely predictable. I think I will have to digest it for a while and see if I change my mind but for now I feel that the ending wasn't up to the rest of the story.
I was looking forward to reading this book with some trepidation which is silly really because I am reading to relax and it shouldn't be work. I was pleasantly surprised that it didn't actually turn out to be work but rather an enjoyable, enlightening experience. It was a little confusing in places and seemed quite disjointed in the dialogue but that was the style of the story. I have to say however, that I would like to read a different translation at some point because some of the sentences felt rather literally translated and just didn't seem right. I don't know if this is really the case or whether it was how the story was written in the first place but it would be interesting to see how other translators interpret certain parts of the story.
The beautiful Vintage Russian Classics edition of the book was a bit of a pain to read. I don't like breaking spines and so I had terrible cramp in my hands. Thick pages and a thick cover made it difficult to bend the book far enough to be able to hold it comfortably. Maybe I shouldn't be quite so fastidious but we all have our little quirks don't we?
Can't See the Wood for the Trees Once I made up my mind to finish this book, I found it easier to read. That doesn't really make any sense, I know but I think I was just getting so hung up on the detail that I wasn't enjoying it. It's well written but kind of dry compared to today's standards of pop history. However, I did eventually get lost in the fascinating worlds of Dark Age and Early Medieval history even if I found Michael Wood's conclusions about pre-Domesday society hard to follow. There was a lot of conjecture which was all backed up by detailed scraps of transliterated original documents but this is where I got lost because most read like lists. I would read this again but for now it only gets 3 stars.
An All Too Familiar Story This is the story of Mary Bliss Parsons, a young girl who moved from England to Massachusetts with her family in the early part of the 17th. century. The book is based on true events in the author's family history and follows an all-too familiar pattern of life as an outsider in a puritan society. Mary Bliss starts life as a servant girl but marries an ambitious man who works hard to become rich. He enjoys spending his wealth on his wife and family. The couple are fortunate that ‘only' 2 of their many children die but this charmed life has its price - the jealousy of their neighbours. This jealousy turns to cries of witchcraft when her neighbours look for someone to blame for their misfortune. However, unlike so many of the trials for witchcraft at the time, Mary is so fortunate as to be found innocent. A really good read.
Something evil escapes a burial mound when some archaeologists decide to open it as the crowning glory of their so far unsuccessful dig. The ancient evil takes over a depressed young woman but then is exorcised by the local pretty witch who warned them against opening the grave in the first place. The evil entity has no where to go but back to the burial mound where the archaeologists reclose the mound and banish the evil forever. Or do they? Find out in the next unexciting instalment of the story. However, you will be alone in reading it, I think, my life is too precious to waste on more of this drivel. This kind of story isn't new and it has been done much better. It didn't give me the creeps in the slightest. There was too much dialogue and not enough atmosphere and I don't think there was an original idea in there. I had hoped for more.
Pink Bear
Our young heroine is snatched off the street on her way to school and kept in captivity to await the birth of her baby. She's sixteen and seven months pregnant. Once the baby is born it will be sold on and her body will be dumped in a disused quarry full of water. That would be enough to terrify the wits out of anybody else but this girl is different. This girl is highly intelligent with an in-depth knowledge of the sciences. She has an analytical mind and uniquely (and usefully) can turn her emotions on and off at will. This means she spends her 33 days of captivity weighing up her assets and planning her escape and revenge on her captors. It won't be pretty...
I wasn't sure what to expect from this one, reviews were ambivalent. I thought it was going to be a straight forward thriller, which, in a way, I suppose it was, but the victim was unusual. I admit the story is pretty far-fetched but it acknowledges that - all I can say is pink bear. It is fun though so why not? The idea of a cool and calculating 16 year old girl who doesn't desperately scream for rescue or quail at the presence of her captors is quite unnerving, as her abductors soon find out. And she doesn't just leave it at escaping, she is playing the long game. I really enjoyed it for the unusual up-beat writing style and the even more unusual victim. Revenge is sweet!
Fourteen year old Evie has got a long summer ahead of her before she is shipped off to boarding school. She falls out with her best friend, her mum spends her time with her new boyfriend and her dad lives elsewhere with his new wife. Evie finds herself alone and desperate for attention. Then one day in a park, she notices a couple of strange girls and follows them to a dumpster where they collect dinner. She meets them again when her bike slips its chain and they offer her a lift to their ranch. There she finds the attention she has been craving. Everyone is chilled out and interested in her. And everyone is in awe of Russell. He is the manipulative head of the cult and he welcomes Evie with open arms. She spends the summer at the ranch, doing drugs and learning about sex, only returning home to keep up appearances (and steal money from her mum). But when Russell doesn't get the record deal he thinks he is due, things go very bad and Evie has a narrow escape.
This is not the kind of book I would normally read. It is a kind of coming of age story which is not my preferred genre. Evie is a lonely, bored and vulnerable teenage girl with low self-esteem, just crying out to be noticed - one of thousands in every generation. It is easy to see how some can be in thrall to sick men like Russell. Her gradual integration into the ranch community was chilling. I liked the end, proving that you can find friends and a sense of belonging in less dangerous surroundings.The writing was great, descriptive enough to let you see the details but it didn't get bogged down.
I loved this book. It is a must read for every parent with a teenage daughter. Or maybe not, I don't think I could have stomached it when my daughter was that age.
I Will Fear No Reread.
So I have finished it. Was I disappointed? No. Was it as good as I remembered it? No. The story was entertaining but it didn't make a lot of sense, esp. towards the end. It also lacked depth. It was through and through a product of the hippy era which in itself is not a bad thing. It could have been so much more, though. It was amusing and whiled away a few hours and you can't ask much more than that.
In Ireland in the latter half of the 19th. century Anna, an 11 year old girl, decides to stop eating. After four months of fasting she is still reasonably healthy, it seems. She is hailed as a miracle but is she truly a saint or is she just a delusional fraud? Sister Michael, a Roman Catholic nun, and Lib Wright, a nurse who served under Florence Nightingale, are employed over a two week period to observe the child and make sure that she isn't secretly being fed by someone. Everything seems to be going well during the first week of the vigil and Lib finds herself almost convinced of this wonder but then the girl starts a rapid decline. The nurses don't have much time to find out why the child stopped eating and why she is suddenly dying, the answers to both questions could be key to saving her.
I'm in two minds about this book but I'm not sure why. It was beautifully written, descriptive but not overly wordy (it couldn't afford to be at 210 pages) and the story was good. It is just that somehow I didn't quite connect. Having said that, I became invested in Annas fate towards the end. It's worth reading but I think it needs some mulling over.
John Wyndham meets Richard Matheson
And this is what the meeting of those two minds would have looked like. Thoroughly enjoyable with a novel beginning and spine-chilling ending. The middle was rather run-of-the-mill though, the usual scavenging and avoiding enemies both living and dead. What made the story stick out for me though was the writing style, he has just the right balance of humour, if you can call it that. Not that the book is funny in any way, it is just that the story has just the right entertainment value, lighter in some places than in others but never becoming really dark or bogged down. Every character was human, even the ones who weren't! In a genre that has become overcrowded, this really stands up head and shoulders above the rest.