Maybe I’m getting tired of all these ladiiesfirst thrillers. Or maybe this one just didn’t have the proverbial it quality. To be fair, I didn’t expect much and might not have even selected it had it not been for one of the characters having OCD. That should have made it interesting. For me, anyway. And it did, to an extent, but a disorder can only go so far. Even though, the author tries to get more mileage out of glitchy brain matters by throwing in another, much more exotic mental disorder on top of things.
But takes those away and what you get is a very typical thriller, although the author busies it up so much with numerous split narratives and timelines, it might take a while to notice. It’s the Gilmore Girls approach, talk mile a minute and someone might not notice you don’t have that much to say. Busy, busy, busy. Three sisters and side players to boot. You’d think just the sisters would be enough. They are, after all, the main attraction. The Stolen Girls as the press had dubbed them. The Sinclair sisters. 20 years ago the 8 year old twins Leah and Marie and their older halfsib Carly were taken from their backyard. Stolen. The ordeal was notably brief and overall, not as terrible as it might have been, but terribly traumatic all the same. It all but annihilated the Sinclair family, but the sisters stayed close. Now, 20 years later, the man responsible is getting out of prison and it pours gasoline on their already difficult personal situations. Carly’’s something of a shut in who barely gets by, Marie’s a junkie in debt and Leah’s OCD is spiraling up and pushing her dearly beloved into the arms of another woman. They can all use the mad money offered to them to tell their story once more for the special anniversary. And they all have reasons not to. And then mysterious notes begin to arrive and strange things begin to occur and suddenly trusting becomes far from given, even among the family. So who if anyone is after the Sinclair sisters and what can they do? Read and find out. Or don’t. There’s nothing new here and the narrative is ridiculously convoluted, it jumps around like its been told the linear narrative is lava. Reads quickly enough and it is reasonably entertaining, just nothing special. The OCD is actually represented well and is the other mystery disorder, the rest is just kinda there. If you like stories about severely f*cked up families, this might work for you. Thanks Netgalley.
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What scares you? Present day offers more than enough to fear even before supernatural enters the equation. Horror is a genre solely devoted to finding out the buttons and pushing them, often to cathartic ends. It allows a certain kind of release, conquering imagined terrors makes it easier to deal with the real ones. I recently read a study demonstrating that people who are horror fans, survivalists, preppers, etc. have fared nicer during the sh*tshow of 2020 than those who are not. The miracles of properly tweaked mentality and all that.
And with that in mind what is scarier than death? The awareness or our mortality is, after all, what (allegedly) separates us from other species. What a perfectly readymade subject for a horror anthology. Enter this book. A collection of short stories seemingly born directly out of 2020 with several well known names and many perfectly worthy contributions from lesser known ones. Which is to say I never heard of the majority of the authors but about 5 or 6 very well known names to genre fans and this didn’t really affect the overall quality very much either. In fact, Malerman’s (a recognizable name for sure,) contribution was pretty underwhelming., as opposed to the first story by Christopher Golden (another genre luminary) who absolutely nailed it with a gut whammy of a story. And most of these assorted tales are about death . Different styles, different approaches, but it’s always there. With a notable exception of a wildly incongruous random ditty about fairies. I can’t say all of these stories were equally good, that’s seldom the case with such a variety, but the overall quality was very good indeed. The middle sagged some, which is sometimes the case with anthologies and old mattresses, but there was a good number of stories that did shine brightly all around. Or maybe shine isn’t quite the right verb for something so thematically bleak and depressing, but you know… My favorite was the one about a mystery robot. Stories 1 and 19 were good too. There was a strictly literary quality bar here that even John Everson with his traditionally lowbrow erotica didn’t manage to bring down. Beyond the Veil takes you beyond the pale of everyday world. It scares all too well with nightmares contained within its pages. This is proper literary horror at its best. Read it if you dare. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley. I’m definitely a fan of Sager, I’ve read most of his books thus far and find them mostly to be definitely of a superior quality to the majority of the jetsam and flotsam overwhelming the ever popular thriller market. Uneven, but still well primarily worth it.
This book is different, though. Still good, but different. It’s different from his other books and it’s different from the other thrillers, the latter is especially appreciated. I mean, there isn’t a married/cheating couple in here, which is refreshing enough in and of itself. No, this is a long car ride journey into the night that the author seems to have done in a style of his beloved movies, and sure enough it’s cinematic. Also, the suspense is taught, the unreliable narrator is cinematically unreliable (literally, the girl has movies playing in her mind when the reality gets to be too much) and the plot twists are a doozy. And also, it’s somewhat over the top, stretched out in way that suggests it’s been purchased by page count not word count and the very final wow of a twist is lamentably predictable. That’s probably the main detractor here. So this cautionary tale of trusting (or mistrusting) strangers is something of a mixed bag, but it is fun. It goes by almost as quickly as its timeline and was easily read in one sitting. This isn’t the best of thrillers or even the best of Sager, but it’s good enough and plenty entertaining. Ride along if you’re so inclined, see if you survive. I’m the first to rate and review this book on here. Oh, the responsibility, the responsibility…
Ok, so, let’s talk about it… There’s a very specific sort of literature out there, a finely crafted and composed works that practically scream of the years it took to produce them in many literary workshops and writers colonies. It shows everywhere from the meticulously arranged mise en scene to the precisely etched characters. And oftentimes the trees are so perfectly arranged that the forest gets forgotten. Which is to say the details are fine, but the grand picture is underwhelming. This novel is a really good example of that. It’s well written with tremendous attention to detail, but overall it doesn’t actually offer all that much outside of a strangely vague (for all the detail) portrait of a protagonist as a young woman. Well, young and youngish, it leaves off with her at 31 or so. The book is structured like a collection of short stories or vignettes, but it’s actually a proper novel with a proper protagonist. Kate. And her journey from a wintery small town in New England and life with a younger sister a depressed single mother to a scorchingly hot Arizona, a career and love affairs. It’s compelling enough of a journey to entice the reader, meaning the narrative itself works. There’s just this thing…after spending all that time with Kate, you don’t really get her as a person. She’s a vague, aloof, distant sort of a protagonist and she maintains that throughout. She’s reticent when it comes to romance, she’s nice enough but never striking in any way, she’s kind of a milquetoast of a person. Or maybe she’s just written that way. And her trajectory has a very women’s fiction thing to it. And so in the end the book does too. Overall, it’s a fine read and coming in under 200 pages it doesn’t overstay its welcome, but it doesn’t quite grab the reader the way you’d want a book to. It just passes by, like scenes from life, faintly charming and then just faint. A very typical university press novel. Competently executed, eloquent, elegant even, but done in very muted tones with a lovely ending to lift it up. Might work differently for different readers. Who knows. But you know the thing about time is that you never get it back. Thanks Netgalley. Every so often I’m just in the mood for these random old timey British mysteries. And Endeavor press/Lume are always willing to accommodate, because they frequently offer them as promotional freebies. This is in fact a second read by the author for me. The first one did nothing, but was too forgettable to put off the next. And this one was actually decent.
Which is to say it was it was very, very British in just the right way and very short as to not overstay its welcome. It’s a story of a murder (obviously, otherwise it would say a recipe for pie or something), but a murder that plays out as a kind of a snafu following a botched robbery following a not properly thought out gift following a not properly thought out affair. You know exactly what’s going on the entire time, there’s no mystery, it’s more of a procedural if that, with the readers following the events along as the police tries to sort things out. The proceedings are elevated by entertaining characters and some charming repartee. And then there’s a silly slap on the butt or slapped onto the butt sort of an ending. It reads like a kind of mystery the author must have written tons of, one of those jobbers for a paycheck, but it’s amusing enough of a quick diversion and not too terribly dated either, although obviously older. Oh, as far as recipes go, this is definitely not the one to follow. Might try pie instead. Just as messy, but at least there’s potential for greatness there. Completing the trilogy with this volume. The Antari magician is back and ready to take on the steel prince. And the prince goes “Oh yeah, you and what army?” and the magician goes “The Rebel Army”. Those are a really kickass gang of traitor pirates, or pirate traitors. And so they fight. Guess who wins?
That’s pretty much the entire book. Trilogy concluded. The legend of The Steel Prince is born. Overall, having read all three books, the general opinion is…fine. They are fine. The story’s fine. Entertaining enough, very quick read, can work as random standalone or an invite to the greater Schwab’s universe or just tasty morsels for the existing fans of it. The art didn’t do much for me at all, it had the video game blandness to, nothing special. In fact, nothing special pretty much covers the entire trilogy, diverting, but nothing special. The fans of the original books would probably get the most out of these books. And other random fantasy fans probably too. Well, in for a penny…I read the first one, so I figured I might just read all three. They are short, after all. In book two prince Maxim Maresh, eager to prove himself as a warrior, sets off to complete a challenge with an atmospheric title like the Night of Knives. Or more like survive the challenge, since no one has apparently ever completed it, not even the tough as nails Isra.
Actually, having read the comic, the challenge didn’t seem all that extreme, but maybe it was just rushed for the page count. There are four aspects to it, physical and psychological. The outcome is pretty much obvious from the get go. Oh and there’s a new foe here, a mysterious Antari magician who’ll be the focus of book three. Onward… Never read, never even heard of the author and with a name like Jocko I’m sure I’d remember, but the book sounded appealing. And sure enough…
Final Spin is technically a crime novel, but it’s certainly not a typical one. Which is to say it can just as easily and accurately be described as a proper character driven dramatic literature. It features a 23 year old protagonist who, despite having both good looks and good brains, haven’t done much with either. Instead, he lives with his alcoholic mother (absent in any way that has meaning from his life and this novel) and his older brother (a spectrumish 29 years old obsessed with cleaning clothes), stacks the shelves in a local supermart and spends time with his gf and his bff. And then a catalyst…his brother’s place of employment, a laundromat owned by a Dutch couple is going up for sale, the owners desperately need 40K and a plan forms. A plan to rob the supermart with his best friend, buy the laundromat and take off for Mexico. It’s an admirable plan in a way that its motivations are pure, a man who has failed to get places at life is determined to at least maintain and preserve the sole joy and happy place of his brother’s life, but it’s a rushed plan, the kind where all things that can go wrong do. So it’s that kind of a novel. And a very compelling one at that. There’s an interesting narrative structure here that the author utilizes, it’s somewhere between a poem and a play both stylistically and in its sparseness, dialogue driven composition, but it’s surprisingly effective, and dynamic (which makes it a step up on most poems and plays) and the sparsity of text takes away nothing you need. I suppose, that’s minimalism at its finest. Plus it makes for an exceptionally quick read for the page count. All in all, an enjoyable read and a great introduction to a new author. One I would certainly read more of, given a chance. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley. Must romance fiction be dumb? Is insulting one’s intelligence a prerequisite to the genre? I don’t normally read this sort of thing, this was more of an experiment that turned out to be a confirmation of my theory that lamentably the answer to those questions might be a resounding yes.
I watched a documentary program about romance genre once, which actually heavily featured this publisher and these types of happily ever after slices of cheesy life and apparently there’s a huge market for it, but the appeal eludes me. You’d think a creature feature with lesbians in it would have at least some redeeming qualities, but no. It’s at best a flat recital of a number of trite clichés, featuring cardboard characters unincumbered by either dimensions or development and ridiculously unrealistic (who lives/thinks/acts like this) scenarios. Yes, even for a creature feature, in fact the creature is more realistic than these pressed paper cutouts. So, does this sound familiar? People from a large city relocate to a tiny village where the unfriendly villagers might be hiding a deadly secret? If it doesn’t…you might very well love this book. If it does, just wait, it gets dumber from there. Collie’s beloved twin sister gets brutally murdered by an abusive ex, leaving her ten year old daughter alone. Now Collie has a kid (though because the characters here are written without so much as a basic grasp on psychology, the kid is perfectly well adjusted and ready to play matchmaker for her aunt, among other things, none of those traumatized orphans in this story) to take care off and their first act is to leave London for the boonies. And they do this by essentially letting the kid do the internet version of spinning the globe and putting a finger down. Because that’s just the kind of thing Collie does. And so they end up in a creepy village. And then there’s Emily, who has more of a reason for being in the creepy village, she is investigating her beloved brother’s disappearance. She’s been at it for a while with nothing to show for it and meanwhile is making her living as a teacher in a local school with a creepy (of course she would be) giant of a woman in charge. Collie and Emily meet. Sparks do that thing they do. And from there on there’s a laughably drawn out will they/won’t they situation going on. Except that of course you know exactly how it’s going to play out, because all roads lead to the happily ever after thing that is actually a requirement for these books. Yes, there’s also a creature lurking in the woods, but who can pay attention to that with all the heavy panting the ladies are doing in each other’s direction. And of course, each of them has a gay bff, one’s even trans, because why not. There are even more potential love interests right there in the village, because that’s what small creepy insular villages are known for, burgeoning gay life. And of course everyone gets along so nicely and the perfectly well adjusted kid adores them all. Will they defeat the evil creature? Will love conquer all? Well, not like there was ever a choice. I’m sure I’m going to be a dissenting minority here, because one of the main things that romance documentary taught is that the fans of this genre have pretty low standards and will defend what they love vociferously, irrespective of obviously low quality of the material. If you like your fiction unoriginal, predictable and unrealistic, your love stories covered in cheap cheese and your scares muffled…this banality might be right up your alley. It was readable, objectively. Technically readable and not offensively terrible, just, you know, dumb. And also too long for what it was. Maybe as a novella it would have just been a laughably silly distraction, but at a novel length, its shortcomings are difficult to ignore. Pass. Thanks Netgalley. It’s a concept so simple that it’s intriguing. An execution so compelling that it holds your attention throughout. It’s a strange book because just as described it sounds about as exciting as…ok, well, as looking at someone’s living space. The trick is, though, you’re doing it throughout the entire timeline, not just the space or the building it’s in, but of the world as we know it. And so it becomes a journey through time with the reader as an invisible time traveler witnessing all the changes. And that’s surprisingly more complex and cleverer that you might have anticipated.
I didn’t know a thing about this prior to finding it at the library, didn’t know it was a famous comic back in the day. Not even sure how it would have worked as such. But it works as a book as a terrific adventure in voyeurism. People haunts the space like ghosts, but only occupy it for a short while, in a grand scheme of things. And the timeline takes us from the long ago past all the way into the future. It’s a fairly simple and fairly simply drawn but a very effective and surprisingly compelling read. Recommended. |
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