Ah damn. I had such high hopes for this one. The premise/hook is fantastic, and with the second season of The Handmaid's Tale starting at the end of tAh damn. I had such high hopes for this one. The premise/hook is fantastic, and with the second season of The Handmaid's Tale starting at the end of this month it's going to be so easy for marketers to draw parallels to Atwood's classic feminist masterpiece. But Vox *is not* that book. There's some good ideas contained therein, but none of them are really developed, and a lot of the themes just seem too heavy-handed and on the nose. There is no subtlety, no allegory, the author is using an anvil in heeding her warnings painting in big giant billboards -- do you SEE? do you SEE how EASY this could happen?
There's a lot of science/academic techno-jargon in the book that's totally unnecessary too and mires down the action and took me out of the story too many times.
The book did get me to think about how all of humanity might be improved if everyone was limited to a hundred words a day. Because seriously, people are the worst and say the stupidest shittiest things non-stop.
A copy was provided through NetGalley for review....more
I hate to be the Debbie Downer here because so many people are so excited about this book, but it did practically nothing for me. I thought the “twistI hate to be the Debbie Downer here because so many people are so excited about this book, but it did practically nothing for me. I thought the “twists” were ridiculous and obvious in a soap opera way, and most of the time I was bored waiting for something of import to happen. This might be a good portrayal of living with agoraphobia but even if it is, using it as a plot device is not enough to carry the whole book. Neither is the main character’s love of classic noir and suspense films. Referencing Hitchcock repeatedly doesn’t miraculously transmogrify your book into a suspense masterpiece.
I suppose if you’re reading by the pool, at the beach (or in a bar because I hear some people do that — I’ve only ever written letters, remember those?) and recovering from a head cold the short chapters and derivative plot would probably scratch an itch. Probably. My advice? Pick up Megan Abbott instead. Life is too short for mediocre books....more
I'm going to try and make this review as quick and painless as possible -- if you liked this book you're not going to want to hear me bellyache about I'm going to try and make this review as quick and painless as possible -- if you liked this book you're not going to want to hear me bellyache about it, and if you didn't like this book, you already feel you've wasted enough of your precious reading time on this series and are just ready to move the fuck on (and hope King is too).
Things started out sort of optimistic for me with Mr. Mercedes -- I didn't hate it; in fact, some parts of it I really enjoyed. Even so, for me it was missing something fundamentally King. If he had stopped there I would have been fine -- but instead, he wanted to drag this wayward experiment into the crime thriller genre out into a trilogy and two more books. And that's where I started to get really frustrated and pissed off.
King is almost 70 years old. I hate to be morbid, but let's be realistic. Who knows how many more books this man has got left in him. Probably not many more. My heart broke a little reading End of Watch. Every part of my Constant Reader soul (which came into existence when I was eleven years old), sunk into the depths of near despair. King was wasting my time, and his time (however much either one of us has got left) on a weak, middling, trashy airport novel filled with ridiculous cardboard cutout characters and a ludicrous plodding plot that left me lukewarm, and quite frankly, bored. King's efforts to unravel his "mystery" with excessive plot details felt like excruciating, eye-crossing infodumps at times.
Arguably End of Watch is the best of the trilogy, but by the time I got to this one, my patience had run out with the entire experiment. When I think about what King could have been writing in the time it took him to peddle this schlock I want to sob and pull my hair out. There's other King books that haven't done it for me over the years, but they've still felt like King. In his ill-conceived foray into another genre, it's like King was a tad self-conscious and insecure and spent more time mimicking what he thinks makes the crime thriller genre so great rather than just writing as himself. When he did try to plug some supernatural elements into the final book, they felt forced and out of place, a messy, stitched up hybrid of a Frankenstein's monster NOBODY wanted. Well, this girl anyway.
And now to cleanse my reader palate of this bitter disappointment, I shall re-read The Long Walk to soothe my Constant Reader soul. It's feeling a little battered and bruised. ...more
Carol! I am so glad I didn't make you suffer through this with me. I took one for the team!
Oh my bleeding eyeballs, but I am very disheartened to repoCarol! I am so glad I didn't make you suffer through this with me. I took one for the team!
Oh my bleeding eyeballs, but I am very disheartened to report that very little in this book's almost 500 pages did anything for me. Despite the zombies, despite the post-apocalyptic landscape, despite the grappling, unending confrontations with human depravity and the silver threads of uncovering and recovering pieces of our humanity --- ALLLLL of my favorite things -- David Wellington's Positive still managed to bore the pants off me. Over and over again.
The prose is just too plodding, too clumsy, too eager to tell -- tell everything about everything! -- rather than ever get out of the damn way and show. The unending, unforgivable descriptions of what characters think and feel are wearying and unsatisfying. Show me dammit!! Let actions speak louder than words. Then perhaps a plodding 500 page novel can be edited into a leaner, meaner 350 pages.
Sigh. Characters are very cardboard cutout and as the hero -- Finn is just too goody-goody unbelievable to the point of being grating. As the first-person narrator his voice fails miserably doing no justice to himself, supporting characters or the novel's action. His unflagging "do the right thing never give up" attitude is sanctimonious and unrealistic as Wellington fails to balance it with anything deeper or nuanced. And then he just becomes so insufferable in his "my people" way of speaking and thinking. YOU'RE NOT MOSES, FINN, AND THIS AIN'T THE EFFING DESERT. I kept longing for the uber-dysfunctional assholery of Rick Grimes to give the story some texture and believability.
Anyway, this was supposed to be my great summer zombie read. No. Not. Negative.
Eh. This one just couldn't carry its weight to the end for me. It just went on for too long so much so by the end my eyes were glazing over and I didn Eh. This one just couldn't carry its weight to the end for me. It just went on for too long so much so by the end my eyes were glazing over and I didn't really care anymore. Maybe if pared back by about 100 pages a tighter, leaner narrative would have been the result and that might have helped things.
The book has a great premise and there are a few creepy scenes, but overall things just take too long to unspool. By the time all the pieces start to come together, none of it feels like a surprise or that compelling. And since there is a "Manson Family" vibe to the whole affair it all starts to feel a little too recycled in its familiarity, despite the supernatural elements that by the climax also feel rather clumsy and heavy-handed.
It's a bummer to have to 2-star this one. I really thought it was going to grab me by the short hairs, especially after this resounding endorsement from Nick Cutter:
"A monstrous Russian nesting doll of a book, holding secrets within secrets; the plot barrels headlong towards one of the most shocking climaxes you're ever likely to read. This one is going to wreck you."
Either Mr. Cutter is extending a tremendous generosity to a fellow author, or I'm just the bitchy meanie who missed the point. Maybe a little from Column A, and a little from Column B.
Wreck me? Hardly. I saw the ending coming a mile away.
A reclusive couple's power goes out and they are forced to use their scarce survivalist supplies to live off the grid.
Sometimes I can be too damn liteA reclusive couple's power goes out and they are forced to use their scarce survivalist supplies to live off the grid.
Sometimes I can be too damn literal for my own good -- and resistant to anything mind-bendy, trippy, weird, or otherwise Weird. That one sentence plot summary above (not to mention the snappy title and awesome cover art) had me salivating to get my hands on this Grindhouse novella. I love any kind of a survival story, especially if you throw in off the grid and possibly end of the world elements.
Survival makes strange bedfellows of us all. It brings out the best (and worst) in us. It makes allies of enemies and makes us kill (and sometimes possibly eat) our allies. For dramatic purposes, survivalstories are the sweetsweetsiren song in my wheelhouse.
This story? Well, it's kind of false advertising in a way. It *is* a story about a couple losing their power, and it is *sort of* about a couple trying to live "off the grid" but it is in no way a literal interpretation of these things. This is not a survival story.
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If anything, it is much more a dark, grotesque psychological exploration of paranoia and our often tenuous relationship with reality and our construction of it. Any other time, and *that* could have been in my wheelhouse too, it's just I was expecting (due to my own penchant for literalness) a grabby, clawing "oh my god the water's turned off and our cupboards are bare" survival story and what I got was an unsettling, weird, examination of one couple's descent into Hell? madness? bad hygiene? a horrible toxic marriage? a fifth dimension?
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Normally, I love it in the shadowy, shaky corners of The Twilight Zone, it just didn't work for me here. Effective, evocative writing though!!! Kudos for that. And some fairly, squishy, glucky, squirmy scenes for those who appreciate things of an effluvium nature. ...more
I always feel guilty when I snag a book from NetGalley and don't love it. But hey -- impartial reviewing and honest reader response is what we all cra I always feel guilty when I snag a book from NetGalley and don't love it. But hey -- impartial reviewing and honest reader response is what we all crave, right? So I get over that guilt pretty quickly.
Adam Rockoff has a great idea here. While my real passion is to watch horror movies (not read about them) every once in a while a book like this sneaks past my defenses with a come hither look I can't resist. That's what this book did with its great cover and catchy (if wordy) title.
Essentially what Rockoff is attempting to do here (and largely fails) is what Stephen King accomplished decades ago with flair and brilliance in his nonfiction study of the horror genre Danse Macabre. What did I want this Christmas season? What do I long for keenly every year that passes? A goddamn, updated sequel! Get on that Uncle Stevie, before it's too late!
King's masterpiece covers horror in all its manifestations in print, and on the big and small screens. Rockoff narrows his focus to just the movies, and that would be enough if it had been a wide view of horror on the big screen, but Rockoff's kink is the slasher / exploitation films (the subtitle for this book should have been my first clue).
Rockoff has already written a book about the rise of the slasher film called Going to Pieces -- heh, cute title -- and without having read it, I'm left with a sneaking suspicion that this follow-up book treads a lot of the same ground. In The Horror of it All Rockoff has a major rant against Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel for a special edition episode of their show Sneak Previews aired in 1980 in which the film critics lambast these "slasher" flicks as a dangerous and despicable trend in film both demeaning and dangerous to women (these men are so high up on their high horse here I can't imagine they can still see the ground). Don't get me wrong -- I love Roger Ebert, he remains one of my favorite film critics -- but boy, was he mostly a fuss bucket when it came to horror movies in general. It wasn't his genre of choice and it showed in many of his prejudicial (and often undeserved) negative reviews of some great movies.
Rockoff is justified in tearing a strip off these two men in an instance where they show complete ignorance about a genre and its fans. Neither Siskel or Ebert appear to have actually sat through any of these movies they are so quick to dismiss as sleazy and misogynist. They show no awareness of "the Final Girl" who often survives to slay the "monster" herself, as well as suffering from the common misconception that it's only women killed in slasher films. Quite the contrary; studies show men are just as likely to die violent deaths on screen in horror movies as their female counterparts.
But I get it. As a fan of the genre since before I could tie my own shoes, I've come up against that kind of prejudice many, many times. Horror is a genre where the consumer is attacked as often as the content itself. Understanding the appeal factor of horror is difficult for some people to accept, people who will look at you with a wary expression as they ask "how can you read/watch that stuff"? As if we should be ashamed, as if we are somehow mentally warped or our moral compass dangerously askew. Don't worry, it isn't. Horror appeals to many of us for very solid, rational, non-psychopathic reasons, I swear. And it appeals just as equally to men as it does women. And that doesn't make the men misogynists, or the women failed feminists.
But I digress. Back to Rockoff. His goal here is to really champion for the slasher films and the deranged and disturbing pushing all the boundaries it can possibly think of exploitation films. And I wouldn't have had a problem with that. But it gets a bit repetitive and tiresome and a lot of the movies he winds up talking about are pretty obscure if you're not a complete and utter fanatic for everything underground and out of print (I'm not).
In his introduction, Rockoff promises to approach horror in a very personal essay, knitting together his experiences of the genre using memoir as a lens. I love that idea. I love hearing about people's personal reactions to movies or what was going on in their lives when. One of my favorites of these sorts of anecdotes came from my own mother. She was dating my father at the time of the theatrical release of The Exorcist.
It was a date movie for them (these are my genes). They had to park the car at the very back of the mall parking lot. When the movie let out after 11pm the mall was closed and the parking lot was almost empty. They walked to the dark, abandoned hinterland of the lot to their car. When my mother went to open the passenger door (this was 1970's Newfoundland - people rarely locked their car doors) a giant looming shadow of a man sat up in the back seat and groaned. My mother screamed. My father cursed (and probably shit himself). Turns out that while they were watching the movie, this guy stumbled out of the bar drunk and crawled into my parents car to pass out mistaking the car as belonging to his friend.
Rockoff has a few personal stories like this, humorous and charming, but not nearly enough of them. He can't help but slip into the film school analysis voice, reviewing and critiquing. Too much of the book's contents feel like grad school essays, a little pompous and righteous. In an effort to "legitimize" horror and testify to its importance and validity, Rockoff comes off sounding like a bit of a haughty dick.
Then there's some sections that just don't work at all, and their inclusion confounds me. Case in point -- in Chapter 5 "Sounds of the Devil" Rockoff talks about the (un)natural marriage of heavy metal music to horror movies. The two go together like PB&J in some ways, in other ways it's a misfit experiment gone awry. He raises a few interesting points and then inexplicably goes right off the reservation with a blow-by-blow account of the time in 1985 Tipper Gore helped found the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) and brought the fight to Washington in the hopes of compelling the music industry to adopt a voluntary rating system warning of the explicit lyrics destined to corrupt and warp innocent children.
Halfway through this chapter I felt like I was reading a completely different book that didn't have anything to do with horror movies at all. It just seemed really out of context and ultimately onerous. I remember when this bullshit was going on at the time -- even at 11 years old I scoffed then, I scoff now. Plus, it's not nearly as interesting a story as the Comics Code Authority and the war against horror comics of the 1950's (check out The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How it Changed America and Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America). And I'm really looking forward to checking out this 2014 documentary Diagram for Delinquents.
If you've made it to the end of this lengthy, rambling review I thank you. You are a good sport and too kind. I didn't hate this book but it failed to really engage me or entertain. I don't recommend it; instead, pop some popcorn, turn out the lights and cue up your favorite scary movie.
About 150 pages in, I’m throwing in the towel, which is something I never thought I would do with a Frank Bill book. I loved Donnybrook so much and haAbout 150 pages in, I’m throwing in the towel, which is something I never thought I would do with a Frank Bill book. I loved Donnybrook so much and had looked forward to the release of this one for so long, maybe my expectations were just too high. Maybe I’m just not in the right mood. All I know is it was feeling like a slog. I was not engaged or invested in what was happening at all. There was something off about the writing style this time that I didn’t like either, when I adored Bill’s prose when reading Crimes in Southern Indiana .
I’m the first to admit I’m a bad reader right now, my attention span and focus isn’t what it should be, but I’m also fairly certain all of the failing isn’t mine alone. Some of it is this book. Because I didn’t finish it, I’m not going to rate it. Maybe I’ll return to it someday and give it another chance to change my mind. ...more
Bees are exceptional creatures. Their hive characterized by drama and high stakes, intelligence and a sophisticated organization that is a marvel to s Bees are exceptional creatures. Their hive characterized by drama and high stakes, intelligence and a sophisticated organization that is a marvel to study and behold. For all its beauty and the tantalizing production of golden, luxurious honey, the bee life comes at a high price -- an existence propped up by slavery and the hive mind. There shall be only one Queen and no original thought. Accept. Obey. Serve. It's Orwell's 1984 in the flesh, Thought police and Big Brother included. Deformity means death and is ruthlessly stamped out in a strive for purity that rivals Hitler's attempts at Eugenics in the creation of a genetically homogenous Aryan Master race.
I was excited to read this book. I needed no convincing that bees could be the stars of their own literary masterpiece in much the same way rabbits became legend in Watership Down. Growing up one of my favorite movies was The Secret of NIMH, a movie I love to this day. I bring it up now because it did what The Bees does not, and that made all the difference for me in my level of involvement and enjoyment of this novel.
NIMH (based on this classic children's book) is an animal fantasy that anthropomorphizes rats and mice to tell a harrowing adventure tale. For me as a child, and even now as an adult, the movie strikes a perfect balance between "humanizing" the animals enough so that the drama soars, yet still allowing their animal natures and the laws of the natural world around them to shine through.
While The Bees is a beautifully written book, with scenes that are quite lovely in their composition, I felt the author lacked conviction and an overall commitment to just what kind of story she was telling. At times, the bees are very humanized. At other times, they feel alien and unknowable. This back and forth and hesitation ultimately prevented me from ever truly bonding with any of the characters. I was emotionally shut out of the story even when my reader brain was fascinated by some of the details contained therein. For that reason, the story dragged in many places.
If you have a personal curiosity of bees, the detailed portrait the author offers here of hive life may indeed appeal to you. She has done her research, and there is definitely poetry contained in some of the pages of this book and in scenes that deal with the harsh realities of the natural world and the strict laws of bee existence.
This is a book you read with your brain, not your heart. ...more
No please, I insist: allow me to put myself out of my own damn misery.
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#repetitive, #infodumps, #shallow w Oh my aching, bloodydamn, gory balls!!
No please, I insist: allow me to put myself out of my own damn misery.
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#repetitive, #infodumps, #shallow world-building, #repetitive, #show don't tell, #horrible characters, #repetitive, #stupid lingo, #boring, #made me want to hurt myself, #made me want to hurt somebody else #and this won an award? #you suck but not as much as this book, #when good ideas go very bad, #maybe i'm just bitter #am i drunk? #i wish i was drunk...more
I really want to tear this book a new one, but it would be the equivalent of beating the shit out of the 80 pound asthmatic kid at school who wears gl I really want to tear this book a new one, but it would be the equivalent of beating the shit out of the 80 pound asthmatic kid at school who wears glasses and stealing his lunch money.
See, here's the problem: I picked up this book with entirely different expectations of what it's actually about. The blurb caught my eye immediately:
On the mysterious island of Nil, the rules are set. You have exactly 365 days to escape—or you die.
My mind immediately began racing with awesome possibilities and potential -- Lord of the Flies, The Hunger Games, Battle Royale, The Long Walk -- yeah, no. NIL is not any of these, not even close. What I should have done was keep reading the plot summary after that initial sexy blurb, which states:
Lost and alone, Charley finds no sign of other people until she meets Thad, the gorgeous leader of a clan of teenage refugees. Soon Charley learns that leaving the island is harder than she thought . . . and so is falling in love.
But I don't want a teenage love story on a deserted island!!!
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I want death games, and blood and danger and action and running and characters I can root for and scream in agony when they meet horrible, unpredictable ends.
Yeah, that is so not this book. There's a little bit of that -- about 13.36% (the rest is all lurve and angst of the teenage variety, my favorite kind). If the author really wants to have a love story (and let's face it, these days it's almost impossible to publish a YA novel without one), then it should have been more balanced. There are some great ideas and plot devices introduced here, but none of them ever get the attention they deserve, or are they ever fully fleshed out.
(view spoiler)[We never get an explanation of what is bringing teens (and only teens) to the mysterious island for their 365 days. Why is it only teens (other than the fact that this is a YA novel), when the event also brings other objects and warm-blooded animals across too? And that stunt that Thad pulls at the very end, his LAST FUCKING SHOT TO LIVE as far as he knows ... why would he push Charley through the gate? That's not romantic, that's just motherfucking stupid, I'm sorry. Ah, but of course, we know there will be some miracle to save him after all, so there's really no tension or upset at this dumber than a bag of hair sacrifice. Sigh. (hide spoiler)]
Young teens put off by violence seeking a more tepid adventure on a desert island may find some appeal here. I found it mostly pedestrian, safe and largely unsatisfying. The only positive I can think to throw out right now is that at least there was no love triangle. At least there was that.
A free copy was provided by the publisher through Netgalley for an honest review. ...more
Deciding to tell a story about a physically disfigured child who lusts after his biological mother while living out their lives in the long, judgmenta Deciding to tell a story about a physically disfigured child who lusts after his biological mother while living out their lives in the long, judgmental, crucifying shadow of the Catholic Church in 1950's St. John's Newfoundland ... is ... curious at best. But also weird and ... questionable.
I'm not sure what kind of a book Johnston thought he was writing. At first it seems humorous and whimsical, a slice of Frank McCourt meets a heaping portion of John Irving. There's poverty, a dysfunctional family, religion, sexual awakening, and some odd occurrences that make you laugh just for their very oddness and inappropriateness.
But as the book progresses, the oddities start to fall flat onto the very shoulders of uninteresting and boring. If Son of a Certain Woman is meant to be Johnston's indictment of the corrupt and nasty hold the Catholic Church at one time held over the historic and capital city of St. John's it really doesn't succeed, neither as a parable, or tongue-in-cheek satire (if that's what you're looking for, get Codco on DVD).
Where it really fails is as a meaningful and emotional coming-of-age story. I didn't fall in love with anybody and did not feel as if there were any stakes worth cheering for. (view spoiler)[Despite Percy's precociousness and precarious place in the world, I could not open my mind wide enough to hope that his gob-smackingly, sensual mother finally lays him. (hide spoiler)]
My disappointment here is heartfelt. I love Johnston's writing and his unerring ability to capture the layered realities and eccentricities of my home and my people. I did enjoy some of his descriptions of the 1950's streets of St. John's, but sometimes, in an effort to paint that portrait, the brush strokes felt a little heavy-handed and clumsy, like a travel book or described video.
While it pains me to do it, I am recommending a pass on this one.
A copy of this book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest review.
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