The Madman’s Daughter by Megan Sheperd

The Madman’s Daughter by Megan Sheperd

Published January 29th, 2013 by Balzer & Bray

Buy this book at (no seriously you need to buy it!): Books A Million / Book Depository / Amazon / B&N

 

Synopsis:

In the darkest places, even love is deadly.

Sixteen-year-old Juliet Moreau has built a life for herself in London—working as a maid, attending church on Sundays, and trying not to think about the scandal that ruined her life. After all, no one ever proved the rumors about her father’s gruesome experiments. But when she learns he is alive and continuing his work on a remote tropical island, she is determined to find out if the accusations are true.

Accompanied by her father’s handsome young assistant, Montgomery, and an enigmatic castaway, Edward—both of whom she is deeply drawn to—Juliet travels to the island, only to discover the depths of her father’s madness: He has experimented on animals so that they resemble, speak, and behave as humans. And worse, one of the creatures has turned violent and is killing the island’s inhabitants. Torn between horror and scientific curiosity, Juliet knows she must end her father’s dangerous experiments and escape her jungle prison before it’s too late. Yet as the island falls into chaos, she discovers the extent of her father’s genius—and madness—in her own blood.

Inspired by H. G. Wells’s classic The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Madman’s Daughter is a dark and breathless Gothic thriller about the secrets we’ll do anything to know and the truths we’ll go to any lengths to protect.

 

Rating:

 

Review:

This book is awesome with a side order of fantastic.  I have not read the book that inspired this novel, although I know the premise and basic plot points.  I expected that to mean that I didn’t anticipate any of the plot twists, that was not exactly accurate but I still loved the book.  It was creepy without being even the slightest bit gory…okay maybe there was one tiny gory moment but not too bad.  It made my skin crawl without being traditionally scary.

Juliet is a character that I had to like.  She is tough, feminine, smart, articulate, creative, and curious.  Its been quite a long time since I read a book with such a kick ass heroine.  She gets a little doe eyed around Montgomery, but I expected that so it was not too terrible to endure. I was really interested in spending more time in Juliet’s head.  Her internal dialogue intrigued me immensely.  At first I thought that my immersion into the book was a result of exceptionally lovely writing.  But as I look back, the writing is very solid and descriptive but nothing exceptional.  The source of my fascination was Juliet.  I couldn’t get enough of her.

The plot was very tightly put together and proceeded at a decent pace.  Not once did I feel like things were moving too fast or that things were moving along at a snail’s pace.  It was the perfect pace for the plot.  It spent just enough time on certain portions of the plot that you started to feel uncomfortable.  You wanted the author to move on, but it didn’t until that discomfort achieved its purpose.  I really enjoyed that.  I like a book that uses the pacing and plot to evoke certain reactions or feelings out of me.  In our current environment of cookie cutter characters put into a cookie cutter plot, this felt different.  I also found that I guessed all of the different plot twists long before they actually happened.  When a twist would come up, I’d sensed it coming and wasn’t surprised by it.  Shockingly, I didn’t find this annoying, I kind of enjoyed it.

The only reason that I deducted a star was the love triangle.  In general, I am sick and tired of love triangles.  They are horribly cliche at this point and not interesting at all.  But the love triangle itself was not the reason I disliked it.  I actually liked the fact that the two men were so vastly different from each other.  I could understand Juliet’s attraction to both and why she would not be sure who was the best man for her.  My problem was that I couldn’t even tell it was supposed to be a love triangle until I specifically told.  I saw no attraction or interest from any of them and then it was kind of like, “Oh she kissed him, I guess she must like him.”  and then “Oh, she kissed him too, love triangle here we come.”  I should have been able to guess it.

And now we have come to the ending of this wonderful tale.  Oh, and what an ending it was.  This is the one twist that I didn’t see coming a mile away.  I was convinced that there had to be more pages that I was missing somehow.  It couldn’t possibly end like….THAT!  Where were the rest of the pages?  Maybe I got a flawed book and they left out a chapter or two at the end.  I still am dumbfounded that it couldn’t possibly end that way.  I need that second book right now to find out what happens.

Hollowland by Amanda Hocking

Hollowland by Amanda Hocking

Published October 6th, 2010 by the author

Buy this book at: Amazon / B&N

 

Synopsis:

“This is the way the world ends – not with a bang or a whimper, but with zombies breaking down the back door.”

Nineteen-year-old Remy King is on a mission to get across the wasteland left of America, and nothing will stand in her way – not violent marauders, a spoiled rock star, or an army of flesh-eating zombies.

 

Rating:

 

Review:

I don’t know about this book, I really just don’t know.  Obviously I have heard the rumblings about the author, you would think she was the literary Second Coming of Christ.  But I had never read any of her books.  This one intrigued me, I like zombie books.  But lately I have been frustrated with zombie books since they all turn out exactly the same.  Immediately I could tell, these zombies would be different.  The origination of the zombies is interesting and not something I remember reading before.  The beginning sequence of the book was also truly fantastic.  The book starts off with a huge burst of energy and I was sucked in right away.  These two things made me think, wow I am really going to love this book.  Well, now I’m at the end.  I didn’t love it but I didn’t hate it either.  Overall, I liked it but the problems with the book were so bad I just couldn’t ignore them.

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!!

As well as this book started, it quickly landed in the realm of the absurd.  Remy meets up with some other survivors at the beginning of her quest to find her baby brother.  That was not unexpected, it happens in every post-apocalypse book there is.  But certain things I just couldn’t get over.  For example, they find a lion chained to a truck who’s as gentle as a newborn kitten.  Yeah, sorry I’m not buying it.  Even lions that have been raised by humans since birth still have a wild streak that cannot be tamed.  Then there was this passage that made me scream:

“Over 200 pounds of jungle cat sat on my chest…”

AAAHHH!!  OMG, Google is your friend!  How on earth did that sentence ever get published?  Let’s just point out the two biggest problems with it.   First, lions live in the savanna of Africa, that is most certainly not a jungle.  Tigers or even panthers would be a jungle cat, but most definitely not lions.  Second, a two second Google search will tell you that an adult lioness generally weighs between 300 and 400 pounds.  That’s a hell of a lot more than 200 don’t ya think?

But anyway, once we move on from my annoyance with that badly crafted and factually incorrect sentence, we move on to finding out that one of Remy’s new companions is a world famous rock star.  Yes, I know, my eyes almost rolled out of my head too.  And he’s oh so hot, and immediately smitten with Remy.  Of course he is.

Then we travel to the now deserted Las Vegas.  I mean, what happened to the ingenuity of the first chapter?  EVERY post apocalypse novel features Las Vegas.  At this point I was so tired of this book that I wanted to give up, but I persevered to the end.

Remy bothered me.  The book was told from her point of view, and she is an emotionless, obsessive girl.  I don’t think she expressed a single emotion until the last handful of pages.  For a first person POV, this was awful.  If she didn’t care about what was happening then how could I?  The character played it off as being stoic and “doing what needed to be done” but it was boring.  Doing what needs to be done doesn’t mean you have no emotion about it.  It means you have emotion about it and quell it to get the job done.

Then we had the ending, it was actually pretty good.  It felt hurried and rushed, but I liked what we were left with in the end.  It was interesting and got me re-invested in the book and wondering just what the hell had gone wrong for the entire middle portion.  The only reason I am considering reading the next book is because the excerpt I got for it at the end of this book was better than anything I read in this entire thing.  It was alright, but only because the beginning and ending saved it.

 

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

Published June 5th, 2012 by Crown

Buy this book at: Books A Million / Book Depository / Amazon / B&N

 

Synopsis:

Marriage can be a real killer.

On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunne’s fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick’s clever and beautiful wife disappears from their rented McMansion on the Mississippi River. Husband-of-the-Year Nick isn’t doing himself any favors with cringe-worthy daydreams about the slope and shape of his wife’s head, but passages from Amy’s diary reveal the alpha-girl perfectionist could have put anyone dangerously on edge. Under mounting pressure from the police and the media—as well as Amy’s fiercely doting parents—the town golden boy parades an endless series of lies, deceits, and inappropriate behavior. Nick is oddly evasive, and he’s definitely bitter—but is he really a killer?

As the cops close in, every couple in town is soon wondering how well they know the one that they love. With his twin sister, Margo, at his side, Nick stands by his innocence. Trouble is, if Nick didn’t do it, where is that beautiful wife? And what was in that silvery gift box hidden in the back of her bedroom closet?

With her razor-sharp writing and trademark psychological insight, Gillian Flynn delivers a fast-paced, devilishly dark, and ingeniously plotted thriller that confirms her status as one of the hottest writers around.

 

Rating:

 

Review:

Small disclaimer, I am a huge Gillian Flynn fan.  I am the type of Flynn fan who keeps multiple copies of her books around the house just in case I need to loan a few copies out to friends.  Sharp Objects is easily one of my all time favorite books, I’ve read it more times than I can count.  Dark Places was not as amazing as Sharp Objects but I still loved it to pieces and have re-read it a thousand times.  I was so excited to get into this book that I was practically salivating on it.  Unfortunately, while I enjoyed this book, it was a slight disappointment for me.  It is with much sadness that I have to proclaim Gone Girl as my least favorite Flynn book to date.

The premise of this book is interesting because how many times have we seen this in the last few decades?  It seems like at least once a year a beautiful woman goes missing, the husband makes himself look oh so guilty, then it comes to light the husband is a no good cheater, then he’s a wife beater, then it comes out the woman was pregnant and he didn’t want it.  Oh the horror!  Everyone watching the television coverage sits back in satisfaction when the husband is finally carted off to jail for murdering his wife.  So to write a book about this very topic, I thought, would be fascinating.  What if it really wasn’t quite that simple?  And once you add in a Gillian Flynn twist, it can only be fantastic.

The characters in this book weren’t very likeable.  Which is common with this author, so I expected it.  Although, I will admit that while I didn’t like Nick my main emotion for him was sadness.  I felt bad for him.  I felt like we were only getting the side of the story that made him look like a shitty excuse for a man and a sugar coated version of everything else.  It wasn’t fair and I saw right through it.  I didn’t really like Amy from the start, I found her voice and character to be disingenuous at best.  Unfortunately that meant that most of the shocking twists in plot, I had already figured out well ahead of time.

The plot was tight and well put together, but it did drag in certain places.  I really liked the layout of the story and characters and it was clear that this was very well thought out.  But every now and then I caught myself thinking, okay I get it stop pounding the point home!

Up until the ending, I was really enjoying the book.  It definitely wasn’t my favorite of this author’s books, but I was still having a great time reading it.  But then the ending.  I don’t even know what to say about the ending because that’s how lukewarm I am about it.  It was a perfect ending from a character perspective.  It fit all of the character’s personalities perfectly and was exactly what those kind of people would do.  But it was also painfully predictable for me.  I suspected that’s how it would end starting around the middle of the book, and that disappointed me.  I am used to getting a huge and unexpected twist at the end from Flynn, and I didn’t get even a little bit of a surprise.  Maybe I just know the author’s style too well and so I got too good at predicting her plot.  I am not sure where the problem happened, but it left me feeling underwhelmed about the book in general.

Lost Souls by Lisa Jackson

Lost Souls by Lisa Jackson

Published March 25th, 2008 by Kensington

Buy this book at: Books a Million / Book Depository / Amazon / B&N

 

Synopsis:

Kristi Bentz wants to write true crime. All she needs is that one case that will take her to the top. She finds it when she enrolls at All Saints College after learning that four girls have disappeared in less than two years.

All four girls were “lost souls”–troubled, vulnerable girls with no one to care about them, no one to come looking for them if they disappeared. The only person that believes Kristi is her ex-lover, Jay McKnight, a professor on campus. The police think they’re runaways, but Kristi senses there’s something that links them–something terrifying. . .

As Kristi gets deeper into her investigation, she gets the feeling she’s being watched and followed–studied, even. Then the bodies start turning up, and Kristi realizes she is playing a game with a killer who has selected her for membership in a special club from which there will be no escaping death.

 

Rating:

 

Review:

Lisa Jackson, what is happening with you? You’ve made me sad, very sad.  I have been a fan of this series, and another of hers too, from the first book.  The last book in this series disappointed me but it still had a few strong points.  This book not only was disappointing, there were no strong points.  Every sentence of this book reminded me of every other book in the series so far.  And Kristi just irritated the living hell out of me.  However, I am getting ahead of myself.

Let’s address Kristi first.  In the beginning I liked Kristi quite a bit.  She was intelligent, sassy, street savvy, and one of the better characters in my opinion.  But somewhere along the way Kristi lost her brain.  It might have fallen out her ear when she was abducted by a serial killer in the last book.  I’m just not sure what happened.  First, she seems to have trouble remembering whether she likes her stepmother or not.  In one paragraph she says that she likes her and just a page later she says that they don’t really get along too well.  Well, which is it?  Then she moves and becomes obsessed with missing girls at her college.  Gee, that sounds smart!  Next thing you know, she’s running around doing all those TSTL things that make me despise so many YA heroines.  For the record ladies, it is NEVER a good idea to walk home in the dark when you know someone is watching you just because you’re too stubborn to let your ex drive you home.  Things like that made her really get on my nerves.  Also ignoring her instincts.  Her instincts are excellent for sensing trouble, unfortunately she’s too stupid to listen to them.   She actively recognizes that her instincts are correct and then disregards them.

The plot has been done so many times in this series.  Kristi must have a serial killer attractant tattooed on her ass, because she seems to be the perfect victim type for every serial killer on the planet.  Which brings me to another plot point.  The actual whodunnit was not that great of a reveal.  One part of it was painfully obvious, to the point where the characters were making observations about how obvious it was.  The other two were so obscure that not a single clue was given through the entire book over who it was.  But in the end there was nothing about the plot that was different or new and exciting.  It was just like all the other books in the series except more boring.

One last annoyance, isn’t this series about Bentz and Montoya?  We hardly saw either of them at all.  Kristi should never have been a main part of this series because she just isn’t interesting enough.  All the good people got taken out and the book suffered for it.

Unwind by Neal Shusterman

Unwind by Neal Shusterman

Published November 6th, 2007 by Simon & Schuster

Buy this book at: Book Depository / Books A Million / Amazon / B&N

 

Synopsis:

Connor, Risa, and Lev are running for their lives.

The Second Civil War was fought over reproductive rights. The chilling resolution: Life is inviolable from the moment of conception until age thirteen. Between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, however, parents can have their child “unwound,” whereby all of the child’s organs are transplanted into different donors, so life doesn’t technically end. Connor is too difficult for his parents to control. Risa, a ward of the state is not enough to be kept alive. And Lev is a tithe, a child conceived and raised to be unwound. Together, they may have a chance to escape and to survive.

 

Rating:

 

Review:

There are very few books that I have ever read in my nearly 30 years that I know will stay with me, this is one to be added to that list.  I know that I will have nightmares tonight and yet I am still glad that I read it.  It made me think about some deep and profound things that I wasn’t expecting.  Unfortunately, I have no idea how to review this book either.  At least I didn’t until I saw a news report today that disturbed me just as much as this book, and then I got an idea.

This book deals with the extreme version of something we see in society today.  Everyone is aware of the endless, circular debates between the pro-choice and pro-life camps.  It’s gotten to the point of insanity.  This novel takes that debate and extrapolates it as far as it will go.  What would  happen if this was the compromise?  Can’t touch a life from conception to 13.  But if your kid isn’t really living up to expectations then you can just “unwind” them and have them harvested for transplant parts.  Pro-choice can be happy because you allowed the parents a choice about whether to be a parent or not.  Pro-life people are happy because technically that life lives on in those that receive their harvested parts.  I was expecting for this to be a projection that went too far into the unbelievable.  Speculative fiction is at its best when you know that it’s very far out there but you could imagine how it could get there.  By the end, I can see the “how it could get there” and it’s frightening.

Unwind isn’t a normal kind of horror book and yet it horrified me all the same.  The horror in this book is more subtle.  It’s that creepy crawly feeling on your arms.  It’s that pit in your stomach that you can’t shake.  It’s that horrible feeling that you don’t want to read the next page but can’t help yourself.  There was one scene in particular that led me to not eat my lunch and just stare at the book blankly for a good hour, absolutely horrified at what I was reading.  Anyone who has read the book knows exactly which scene I’m talking about, so I won’t elaborate.

As far out of the realm of possibility as this notion seems, I couldn’t help but think is it really THAT out there?  I don’t mean for this to turn into a debate on abortion and my own personal feelings on abortion (whether for or against) are irrelevant for the purposes of this review.  But this book made me ponder the issue in ways I never thought I would.  Have we really lost any value on life?  Could we lose that respect for life this badly?  Planned Parenthood performs abortions every 94 seconds, despite the founder of the organization being an avowed racist who wanted to exterminate blacks through abortion.  Okay, fine, we can’t throw out the whole organization because it was started with bad intentions right?  I suppose that’s fair!  But then we have the constant debate over when is it abortion and when is it murder?  Where is that line?  Society doesn’t really have a clear answer for that, and so the vitriol from either side continues.  But I can’t help but wonder how far down this particularly creepy road we are when I see pictures of completely empty courtrooms at the trial of abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell.  He is charged with 8 murders, 7 viable infants that he performed “partial birth abortions” on by cutting their spinal cords while partially out the birth canal, and 1 mother whom he gave a lethal dose of Demerol during an abortion procedure.  The testimony is sensational, the accounts of the crimes are lurid, and the charges are horrific.  Yet, the media isn’t salivating all over this trial, it isn’t even giving it air time.  Why?  Is it because it treads too close to the abortion debate for comfort?  Or perhaps is it because, as a society, the value we place on human life is dwindling?  I don’t know, the answer, but it troubles me.  Just like this book troubled me.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/alleged-victim-calls-philadelphia-abortion-doctor-kermit-gosnell/story?id=12731387#.UWi8akrDmSo

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-kermit-gosnell-why-so-little-coverage-20130412,0,4790500.story

I believe this is a book that needs to be read and needs to be discussed.  I couldn’t put it down and it will be a long time before it leaves my thoughts.

Review: The Restorer by Amanda Stevens

The Restorer by Amanda Stevens

Published: April 19th, 2011 by MIRA

Buy this book at: Book Depository / Books A Million / Amazon / B&N

 

Synopsis:

My name is Amelia Gray. I’m a cemetery restorer who sees ghosts. In order to protect myself from the parasitic nature of the dead, I’ve always held fast to the rules passed down from my father. But now a haunted police detective has entered my world and everything is changing, including the rules that have always kept me safe.
It started with the discovery of a young woman’s brutalized body in an old Charleston graveyard I’ve been hired to restore. The clues to the killer–and to his other victims–lie in the headstone symbolism that only I can interpret. Devlin needs my help, but his ghosts shadow his every move, feeding off his warmth, sustaining their presence with his energy. To warn him would be to invite them into my life. I’ve vowed to keep my distance, but the pull of his magnetism grows ever stronger even as the symbols lead me closer to the killer and to the gossamer veil that separates this world from the next.

 

Rating:

 

Review:

Every time I pick up a book lately my only thought is “Please God don’t let this suck!  All I seem to do is leave bad reviews!”  I had such high hopes that this might be the one to break the streak.  First, it has an orgasm worthy cover.  I could stare at this cover for hours and not even blink once, it’s just that gorgeous.  The synopsis just about made me faint in ecstasy.  It sounds EXACTLY up my alley!  This book excited me, it intrigued me, and ultimately it disappointed me.

My biggest sticking point with this book was that Amelia is SO DAMN BORING!  You can’t even call her a Mary Sue because she manages to screw up everything she does and doesn’t have anyone falling at her feet and begging her to be theirs.  Amelia is supposed to ignore the ghosts…why?  Well we get a vague answer about haunted people being drained of life force but honestly it’s never entirely explained how people become haunted because most haunted people can’t even see the ghosts.  So, *headscratch* try and figure that one out!  Then Amelia has the most boring job on the face of the earth.  She spends hours cleaning tombstones with brushes and doing….other restoration thingys that never get explained.  As if this wasn’t boring enough, she is asked to assist on a murder investigation and then does NOTHING.  No, I literally meant nothing.  She stands around and eavesdrops on other people and then asks a few stupid questions and then stands around some more.  Then, for the cherry on top, let’s throw in her obsession with Devlin.  It’s actually really creepy.  She turns into a complete stalker.  She tracks down information about his dead wife and child behind his back for fuck’s sake!!  I just can’t even begin to describe how much of a line crossing that was.

The murder mystery of this book couldn’t even hope to overcome how boring everything else was.  Frankly, I don’t even remember how it got resolved because I was very nearly in a coma by then.  I couldn’t even get enough passion about this to one star it and tear it apart.  I give it two stars because the cover still rocks, the rest is useless.  If you need a cure for insomnia, give it a shot!

Miscellania

I don’t particularly feel like doing a book review tonight.  I’ve had a lot of other things going on and thoughts running through my head about stuff so decided to run with that.  Let’s begin with movies I’ve seen lately…

 

The Host

Color me underwhelmed.  I read the book and quite enjoyed it.  Twilight was always a guilty pleasure, like a soap opera, for me.  You know that it’s awful and ridiculous but you can’t help but reading it anyway.  I found The Host highly superior to Twilight and loved the “bigger picture” aspect to the plot.  Unfortunately the movie came off as cheesy, corny, and nothing more than a teenage love flick.  The conversations with Melanie and Wanderer made me do a snortgiggle with how silly they sounded.  The plot was glossed over and it was all about how the alien finds penises that she likes and suddenly her entire existence makes sense.  Um, really?  That’s all you took from the book?  Because that’s sure as hell all that came across in the movie.

 

Warm Bodies

I am 50/50 on this one.  I haven’t read the book and perhaps that was part of the problem, I can’t be sure.  Some parts of it were very funny and I really enjoyed it.  But it had a few sticking points that I couldn’t quite get past.  For example, R kills her boyfriend.  No I meant that literally, he ate his face off in front of her.  R tells her this and she just shrugs and says “well, I suppose you’re a zombie and so it makes sense.”  Wait…what?  He ate your boyfriend’s face, you brush it off and then start falling for him?!  What is wrong with you!  I also had a lot of unanswered questions at the end, but since it’s part of a series I suppose that’s the reason.  At the end, this was entertaining and a decent use of my time but nothing amazing.

 

Chernobyl Diaries

I should have known.  Please, everyone who warned me, feel free to scream “told you so!’ from the nearest building you can find.  This one isn’t new, but I wanted to see it and saw it on a movie channel recently and decided to give it a shot.  What the fuck was this piece of garbage?  Sometimes, I can look past factual inaccuracies for the sake of a story.  Unfortunately for this movie, there was no story so nothing was preventing me from laughing at the absurdity.  Here’s the problem.  I watched a show about Chernobyl that was filmed in 2009-2010 (around the same time as the film) and discussed all the things that have to be done to prevent danger to visiting people.  This film ignored all of those.  Let’s just take a look here:

1. The area around Chernobyl is set in rings that are fenced, locked, and guarded 24/7 by military personnel.  You have to show signed forms proving that you have permission to pass and, even then, if the guards there don’t like it then they can refuse you entry for any reason.  In this film, these tourists just hired someone to take them to the site and they just drove right into town.  Uh huh, okay.

2. After passing the final checkpoint, everyone is required to wear a head to toe radiation suit in order to protect them from the radiation unless you will be there less than a few hours.  Even this suit is not 100% and you are only allowed to stay for a certain time until the radiation saturation in your body starts to rise too much and then you have to leave or risk radiation poisoning.  Workers who are trying to restore the area are only allowed to work 5 hours a day for a month before they have to take 2 weeks off.  In the film, everyone was there in their street clothes for over 24 hours (maybe closer to 48, it was hard to judge) before showing any signs of radiation sickness at all.  In fact none of them showed any signs of radiation issues until they walked into the reactor itself, which is obviously the most dangerous area.  That’s not even close to being possible.

3. The batteries on any electronic equipment will be substantially impacted and their batteries drain much more quickly.   Not in this film!  In this film they all had cell phones that were fully functional the entire time…did I mention this was like 24-48 hours?

4. While some animals do live in the area surrounding Chernobyl, they are usually affected by the radiation and rarely do they live in the actual city since there’s not much there.  According to this crappy movie, bears wander in and out of buildings all the time, and there’s a pack of dogs that are in the city full time attacking people.

So those are my factual problems.  But the story just sucked apart from that.  Apparently they are attacked by radioactive people who are now…cannibals I guess?  I’m not sure if they were supposed to be workers who died there or tourists who’d died…I just don’t know and I don’t care.  Here’s the reasons I should have known better:

1. It’s from the same people that brought us the demon chicken of Paranormal Activity.

2. It’s from the same people that brought us the “all male characters are narcissistic dicks who really need to die” of Paranormal Activity 2.

3. It’s from the same people that brought us “we can’t even bother to read a plot summary of our two previous films so we’ll just make it up as we go” of Paranormal Activity 3.

4. They are also the same people who brought us “we don’t really have a story but we want your money” of Paranormal Activity 4.

5. Oh and it’s the same people responsible for that horrendously bad TV show The River (ripped off Destination Truth frame for frame in the series premiere).

6. It’s the same people that gave us “worst ending ever” Insidious.

7. And of course its the same people that tortured us with “even the preacher wasn’t this preachy on Sunday” Area 51.

I am disgusted with myself, I admit it.

 

Now on to weird stuff….

So I was listening to The MVP podcast today, old episodes but I heard this ad for a different podcast.  It’s tagline was something to the effect of:

Mermaids, vampires, werewolves.  What if those mythical creatures were not only real but were one creature?

Um….okay.  If I read that on a book cover I’d probably start giggling and put it back down.

 

And in TV news….

I finally brought myself to watch the series finale of Fringe.  I wanted to shake all tv and movie execs (and maybe a few authors too) who screw up endings and go “THIS IS HOW YOU END A FUCKING SERIES!”  It was so great, I laughed and I cried and I was surprised and then I cried because it was over.  I absolutely loved it.  They couldn’t have ended the series better in my opinion.  The way they take you to that scene that we’ve seen so many times over the course of a season and you are hoping and praying that it ends differently.  And finally, after so much agony, you see Peter’s daughter land in his arms and then….*sniff* oh man, here go the tears again.  *wipes eyes* I think I should stop talking about it now, I’ll start ugly crying soon.  You know, the kind of crying where your nose runs down your face and the neighbors can hear you two buildings away and you just don’t give a damn.

Last Days by Adam Nevill

Last Days by Adam Nevill

Published February 26th, 2013 by St. Martin’s Press

Cover and synopsis provided by the publisher.

 

Buy this book at: Book Depository / Books A Million / Amazon / B&N

 

Synopsis:

Indie filmmaker Kyle Freeman is hired to create a documentary about The Temple of the Last Days—a notorious cult that met its chilling end in an Arizona desert back in 1975. As he travels to the cult’s birthplaces in London and France, and its infamous demise in the United States, a series of uncanny events plague all his shoots: out-of-body experiences, visits in the night, ghastly artifacts appearing in their rooms each evening, and the deaths of their interviewees.

What exactly it is the cult managed to awaken – and what is its interest in Kyle Freeman?

 

Rating:

 

Review:

There is only one way to put this.  This book sucked.  It sucked to high heaven.  It bored me nearly to death with every page.  I honestly wondered if all of the good reviews were paid to say nice things about this crappy tome.  Even as I write this, I think that might still be the case.  With all that said, here are my issues with this crappy thing.

The author has zero sense of pacing.  This book moved at a snail’s pace for chapter upon chapter and then suddenly all kinds of things started to happen in the last quarter of it.  The idea of this book is a good one, a filmmaker is hired to do a documentary about a cult from the seventies that committed mass suicide/murder and manages to stumble into paranormal activity that targets him.  That sounds like it should be good right?  It’s not.  In every single city or location the characters visit the exact same things happen.  Every person the characters interviewed said exactly the same thing.    Approximately 300 pages was a repeat of what happened in the first 100 pages. I was bored to tears.

The author’s descriptions were annoying and confusing.  I didn’t understand what was going on most of the time.  As an example, the author described the room in which the last scene takes place for 2 whole pages.  The picture of it was fully formed in my head and it was a great description!  But then all of a sudden he starts talking about a “large plastic tent” in the middle of the room that had never been mentioned before.  Then just a few paragraphs later it’s described as a “plastic cube” that is solid enough that it requires beating it and shooting at it to dismantle it.  But, I thought it was a tent?  And why wasn’t this included in the initial room description if it’s so important?  If it was a tent then why was it so hard to puncture?  By the time I got to this question I had been pulled completely out of the story and just didn’t give a crap anymore.  This happened so often that I was regularly confused and thought I had skipped over something accidentally.  So I would go back and re-read that part and realize, no I hadn’t skipped over it, it was never addressed.

Most stereotypical American characters ever!  Let’s see, there was the sheriff who was a complete hillbilly.  Cowboy hat and boots, spoke with a drawl, kept saying things like “ya’ll” and “ain’t”, could have walked right out of a western…but he’s from Arizona.  Yeah, it confused me too.  Or Jed, the gun toting, muscle bound Jesus freak who thinks he’s on a mission for God, is unstable and keeps pointing guns at his own friends.  I mean, really?  All we needed was an overweight, outspoken black woman and the stereotypes would have been a complete collection!  It was ridiculous.

Kyle was supremely unlikable.  He spent most of the book mentally belittling and mocking the people he was interviewing for believing in this paranormal stuff.  Then he went on to experience the paranormal stuff himself and freaked out, running around and screaming at everyone else to figure out a way to protect him.  Shut up dirtbag!  Nobody likes you!  Just die already and quit your whining.  I hated this guy so much.

I was very disappointed that I hated the book this much.  I heard this author compared to my favorite author, Scott Sigler, and was excited to see if that comparison held true.  It most certainly does not!  This author has no sense of pacing, storytelling, or character building.  I can’t, in good conscience recommend this book to anyone, it was awful.

RIP Language of English

I can’t take it anymore and I am going to blog in anger about it. I could be doing a review right now, but I’m too annoyed.  The poor English language has endured so much abuse in the last several generations.  What the hell is happening to our society?  We’re turning into a bunch of illiterate morons who survive on constant entertainment and have an overly inflated sense of our own importance.   We have kids graduating from high school without being proficient in basic level math.  The US is one of the most wealthy and industrious nations to ever exist in the history of mankind, yet our children are stupider then some third world countries.  And still our kids believe that they are the most special and amazing little snowflakes on earth because….well, because they exist!  America, our stupidity is showing, and it irks me the most when it comes to proper language and grammar.  Here are my complaints:

1. Text speak.  What the fuck is wrong with you that you can’t type in complete words?  And don’t give me that bullshit excuse about how you need to preserve space because texts cost money.  If you haven’t discovered unlimited text packages by now then there’s no hope for you.  I refuse to converse with people who use terms like “gud” and “lke” and “h8″.  It makes me want to gouge my eyeballs out.  Now, I will be the first to admit that I tend to use internet acronyms and slang on occasion, but not when I want to actually appear to be an intelligent individual.

2. I hereby ban the word “basically” from the English language forever.  It means nothing in the context that it is used 99% of the time. If I have to hear “well basically….” before an explanation one more time I will shed someone’s blood!  What does it even mean!?  NOTHING!!  My breaking point was seeing it on the news.  A witness to a horrific crime was explaining what he saw and started it with, “well, you know, basically…” I wanted to scream at my television as I felt my IQ dip.  NO MORE BASICALLY!!  It means nothing!!  I even get angry at myself when I catch myself doing it.

3. I also hereby ban the word “like” from ever being used when not making a legitimate comparison statement.  Tell me folks, how many of these conversations have you heard?  “And then I was like, you know whatever.  And he was like, yeah.  And I was like no, that’s ridiculous.  And then it was like, oh my God!”  I would give anything to temporarily lose my hearing when I hear one of those.  It hurts my soul.

4. Stop using the word “whenever”.  The “ever” is unnecessary.  “When” is perfectly descriptive for what you are trying to convey.  Tell me, how does this make anybody sound intelligent?  A news anchor saying, “Whenever they got sentenced, the judge was exceptionally harsh considering the circumstances.”  I swear to God, I actually heard that!  Whenever they got sentenced?  Why is “when they were sentenced” not good enough?  Do you have to make yourself sound idiotic?  The news?  Really?  Not even the news is literate anymore.

5. Stop using the word “literally” in ridiculous ways!  Again, my breaking was hearing something like this (every day, all the time, nonstop):  “That movie was so scary, I literally jumped out of my skin.”  Did you? Really? You literally jumped into the air and removed yourself from your skin?  Yeah, somehow I didn’t that you did!  So stop fucking using the word literally when you don’t mean it literally then!?  I have lost more than one friend for lashing out over this one and making smart ass comments about their word choices.

And I won’t even get started on the destruction of grammar right now, I’d be here the rest of the night.  For now, let us all work on these things and hopefully make ourselves seem a tiny bit more intelligent.  Please?  For the sake of all that is good and right in the world, stop abusing the English language.

Unholy Ghosts by Stacia Kane

Unholy Ghosts by Stacia Kane

Published May 25th 2010 by Del Rey

Cover and synopsis from the Goodreads book page

Buy this book at: B&N/ Amazon /  Book Depository / Books A Million

 

Synopsis:

THE DEPARTED HAVE ARRIVED.

The world is not the way it was. The dead have risen, and the living are under attack. The powerful Church of Real Truth, in charge since the government fell, has sworn to reimburse citizens being harassed by the deceased. Enter Chess Putnam, a fully tattooed witch and freewheeling ghost hunter. She’s got a real talent for banishing the wicked dead. But Chess is keeping a dark secret: She owes a lot of money to a murderous drug lord named Bump, who wants immediate payback in the form of a dangerous job that involves black magic, human sacrifice, a nefarious demonic creature, and enough wicked energy to wipe out a city of souls. Toss in lust for a rival gang leader and a dangerous attraction to Bump’s ruthless enforcer, and Chess begins to wonder if the rush is really worth it. Hell, yeah.

 

Rating:

 

Review:

Anyone who has spent time in the online book reading community knows the name of Stacia Kane.  Normally her name is synonymous with a kickass author who just…well kicks ass!  At least that is what led me to buy this book.  I appreciated my interactions with her as a reader and so wanted to show some support.  Yet, still, I wasn’t entirely sure I was going to like this book for much of the first half.

Chess is awesome, let’s just say that right off the bat.  I loved her.  But then, if you read my other reviews you’ll see that I have a penchant for some seriously fucked up characters.  So that might explain my affection for her.  She is not a nice character.  She’s high most of her waking hours and something of a bitch for the remaining hours.  And that is exactly why I liked her so much.  She was gritty and real and I wanted to hear her backstory. And whoa, what a backstory it was.  No wonder she was high all the time, I would have been too.

The world was an interesting one too.  But I have to admit that I wasn’t overly pleased with the world building and felt like a lot was simply assumed.  I really hate it when an author assumes that I know what the hell they’re talking about, and Kane did that to a certain extent in this book.  But it wasn’t overly so, and so I could overlook it and enjoy the world building that we did get.  I liked the story that got Chess involved in the whole case and liked the pacing for how it unfolded.  My biggest complaint about this world was the slang.  It grated on my nerves and took me quite awhile to become accustomed to.  Eventually I found that it didn’t bother me so much, but at first I was ready to pull my hair out.  Along those same lines was my issue with the character’s names.  I can’t be all that terrified of a mobster drug dealer named Bump.  It makes me snort giggle just saying it.

But then there was Terrible.  Yes, that’s a name too….remember what I said about the names?  At first I wasn’t sure I was going to like him all that much but by the end *sigh*.   He’s a cutie and I was rooting for him in the love interest department.  A giant teddy bear who could also probably decapitate someone barehanded if he wished.  So attractive.

Oh, and the bad guy!  I admit, it surprised me.  I figured out the red herring pretty easily, or at least I prayed that it was a red herring and turned out to be accurate.  But I just didn’t suspect the real culprit. It never really crossed my mind and then when it happened I was dumbfounded.

I enjoyed this book a lot but it took awhile for me to get into it.  Once I hit the halfway point I was completely invested but before that it wasn’t looking too good.  I would suggest this book to fans of the genre, but people who are not Urban Fantasy fans might give up before the good parts.  For me, I will be reading the next one for sure.