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Showing posts with label Ghosts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ghosts. Show all posts
Monday, September 29, 2014
By Lauren Oliver
Published by Ecco
Publication Date: September 23, 2014
Copy received from: Publisher at BEA
My Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆
The New York Times bestselling author of Before I Fall and the Delirium
trilogy makes her brilliant adult debut with this mesmerizing story in the
tradition of The Lovely Bones, Her Fearful Symmetry, and The
Ocean at the End of the Lane—a tale of family, ghosts, secrets, and
mystery, in which the lives of the living and the dead intersect in shocking,
surprising, and moving ways
Wealthy Richard Walker has just died, leaving behind his country
house full of rooms packed with the detritus of a lifetime. His estranged
family—bitter ex-wife Caroline, troubled teenage son Trenton, and unforgiving
daughter Minna—have arrived for their inheritance.
But the Walkers are not alone. Prim Alice and the cynical
Sandra, long dead former residents bound to the house, linger within its
claustrophobic walls. Jostling for space, memory, and supremacy, they observe
the family, trading barbs and reminiscences about their past lives. Though
their voices cannot be heard, Alice and Sandra speak through the house
itself—in the hiss of the radiator, a creak in the stairs, the dimming of a
light bulb.
The living and dead are each haunted by painful truths that will
soon surface with explosive force. When a new ghost appears, and Trenton begins
to communicate with her, the spirit and human worlds collide—with cataclysmic
results.
Elegantly constructed and brilliantly paced, Rooms is an
enticing and imaginative ghost story and a searing family drama that is as
haunting as it is resonant.
Review: This melancholy gothic tale
features ghosts, and uncanny happenings, but the horrors are very much based in
reality. The ghosts are not what the Walker family is primarily haunted by, it’s
the horror and disappointments in their lives.. A sense of sadness permeates
the novel as characters, both living and dead, are forced to reveal their
secrets and deal with their grief, not only over death, but the loss of
innocence, love, potential, and hope. Loneliness is also prevalent, whether the
loneliness of death or the loneliness that comes from holding in a terrible secret.
One of my favorite aspects of this
story is the structure: the novel is divided into sections each featuring a
room of the house. Over the course of this section, the characters, whether the
remaining members of the Walker family or the two ghostly former residents, confront
the memories of events that have taken place in that room, things they have
kept hidden from their loved ones or refused to admit, even to themselves. Be
warned: suicide, domestic abuse, and child molestation are all included in the
house’s history.
As far as the characters inhabiting this
haunted house, I can’t say I found them likable but I did empathize with their
grief and understood their various ways of coping. They have all been hurt by
life and, when it comes to the Walker family, this damage has prevented them
from connecting with each other. Even the ghost characters felt very real, flawed
in a way that doesn’t leave much room for likability but is interesting and
honest.
I do have one or two nitpicks: one
being the teen girl character that appears out of nowhere so that Trenton has
someone outside of the house to interact with, the second being the suddenness with
which some later revelations are made: to the point where I was wondering if my
ARC was missing pages. But these are minor, and on the whole I found this story
engaging. There are no easy solutions to the Walker family’s problems, but they
do unburden themselves of the weight of what’s haunting them and there is a
sort of catharsis. A definite recommended read for those looking for a more
contemplative haunted house story.
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
By Jonathan Stroud
Published by Disney-Hyperion
When the dead come back to haunt the living, Lockwood & Co. step in . . .
For more than fifty years, the country has been affected by a horrifying epidemic of ghosts. A number of Psychic Investigations Agencies have sprung up to destroy the dangerous apparitions.
Lucy Carlyle, a talented young agent, arrives in London hoping for a notable career. Instead she finds herself joining the smallest, most ramshackle agency in the city, run by the charismatic Anthony Lockwood. When one of their cases goes horribly wrong, Lockwood & Co. have one last chance of redemption. Unfortunately this involves spending the night in one of the most haunted houses in England, and trying to escape alive.Set in a city stalked by spectres, The Screaming Staircase is the first in a chilling new series full of suspense, humour and truly terrifying ghosts. Your nights will never be the same again . . .
Review: Have you ever enjoyed a book so much that you slowed down your reading because you didn't want it to end? That was me reading The Screaming Staircase, a book so charming and entertaining I spread my reading out in order to savor it. I'm a huge fan of Stroud's Bartimaeus series and this book is just as well written, with an alternate British setting that is just as intriguing.
The three central characters are all amazingly well rounded, with strengths and weaknesses. Lucy, haunted by the trauma of a ghost hunt gone horribly wrong, finds a new friendship/family with Lockwood (an intelligent and charismatic leader who's still prone to screw-ups) and George (the hilariously acerbic researcher). Together they make an entertaining team as they work to solve a mystery, save their business, and fight some ghosts along the way. Some of the ghost sequences I found very effective in their creepiness, even for someone who loves horror novels. The mystery itself was resolved satisfactorily, but there's still plenty to learn about these characters and their world. I can't wait for the sequel.
I'll be giving this book to my nephew, who's just finished Harry Potter. I think he'll love it.
4.5 Cups of tea
This book is RIP VIII approved.
Thursday, August 29, 2013
But when Paige is captured and arrested, she encounters a power more sinister even than Scion. The voyant prison is a separate city—Oxford, erased from the map two centuries ago and now controlled by a powerful, otherworldly race. These creatures, the Rephaim, value the voyants highly—as soldiers in their army.
Paige is assigned to a Rephaite keeper, Warden, who will be in charge of her care and training. He is her master. Her natural enemy. But if she wants to regain her freedom, Paige will have to learn something of his mind and his own mysterious motives.
Summary from Goodreads
ARC received at BEA 2013
Review: The Bone Season has all the elements of an exciting novel set in an interesting new world, but is dragged down under the weight of its own exposition.
Scion London is the result of history diverging from our own in the time of Edward VII with people suddenly developing psychic powers. The government, in an effort to control this phenomena, created Scion citadels. There purpose is to control the population and weed out anyone with clairvoyant abilities: the people known as "voyants". There are many different kinds of voyants: soothsayers, palmists, oracles, tasseographers, julkies, with different abilities. A chart is provided at the start of the novel. In order to stay safe from the authorities many voyants join a crime syndicate with various gangs controlled by "mime-lords" who control various sectors of the city and engage in "mime-crime". One day she is caught and sent to the prison city Sheol I. Paige must now fight a war against otherworldly creatures (Emim)at the behest of a different race of otherworldly creatures (Rephaim). If all of this sounds very complicated, that's because it is.
I'm normally the last person to complain about a complicated narrative, it's just that information in this one is provided so clumsily, and it seems to go on forever, largely at the expense of character. I understand the urge to share every detail about a world you've created, but some things seemed irrelevant or overly detailed. The description of the various sectors for example. As for clumsy exposition: Paige entertains herself on a train ride by reading the information on her ID and reflecting on the history of Scion. As one does. We learn about Sheol I through Paige wandering around having conversations with various helpful but one-dimensional characters. It's very hard to care about any of this. I feel this switch in setting would have had more impact had the narrative spent more time in Scion London at first. The rules of the world must be firmly established before breaking them can have any meaning, and its hard to care about characters you know very little about. Therefore, when Paige talks about missing her gang, it's meaningless because the reader has no idea who those people are or the nature of her relationships, beyond that it's a dangerous gang that works her to exhaustion.
The story does gain more momentum around the halfway point. We learn more about Paige's Raphaim keeper, Warden, and are finally introduced to the often-referenced gang members (via dream flashback). Finally actual characters with personalties! The action picks up as well as the Emim appear and Paige begins to take action. In the beginning I would pick this book up, read a few pages, then put it down, but the last 200 pages had me riveted. That's why despite the rocky first half I will definitely be reading the sequel and do give a tentative recommendation. The world is interesting, and now that most of the heavy exposition is out of the way, I'm curious how Shannon will continue. This is a debut novel, much of the information may be relevant in one of the projected sequels, and there were enough interesting character beats and originality that I'd like to read more about them.
Recommended for: People who enjoy reading about alternate worlds with a complicated mythology, a little romance, action, and lots of exposition.
3 out of 5 bone-grubbers
Monday, August 19, 2013
Featuring haunting archival early-twentieth-century photographs, this is a tense, romantic story set in a past that is eerily like our own time.
Review: In the Shadow of Blackbirds is a creepy, melancholy historical novel that captures a sense of death as omnipresent, likely a not-uncommon feeling to those living in the United States in 1918. It's interesting that the novel not only focuses on the effects of WWI but also on the flu pandemic, a topic I don't believe I've ever seen addressed in fiction set in this time period (aside from Downton Abbey Season 2). The sad yet creepy atmosphere of the novel is its strongest feature: bodies are piled in the streets, everyone wears masks, and even leaving your home can be life threatening. Meanwhile more and more young men are sent overseas and return home changed and broken, if they return home at all. It's no wonder people became preoccupied with death and the hope of an afterlife.
In fact I found the real-world historical elements so compelling that when the supernatural made an appearance it felt like an intrusion. However the central mystery was interesting and served as a way of tying in some poetry from WWI. The photographs were a nice touch, although not as frequent or as plot relevant as those found in Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. Overall I enjoyed this story for the mystery and the fact that Cat Winters had clearly put a lot of research behind it.
Character wise, there was one thing that bothered me a little. I liked that Mary Shelley Black was smart and knew it, and took action to solve the mystery and discover the true fate of Stephen, the boy she lost in the war. However I did feel she suffered a little from a syndrome I like to call Character Displaced In Time, where a character in a time period with a different set of social norms holds the views of a kid born in the '90s. This is usually so the reader can find the character more relatable. Of course there were progressives in that time, and I don't disagree with Mary in general but I disliked the way she looked down on every other female character for not being as awesome as she. From patronizing her aunt who works in a shipyard to criticizing the spiritualist's dress to being contemptuous of volunteers at a nursing home for soldiers based on a photograph of them pouring tea, Mary Shelley had a bit of an attitude I found hard to stomach. It which threw me out of the story every time it came up and lessoned my enjoyment of the novel overall.
3.5 haunted photographs.
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Showing posts with label Ghosts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ghosts. Show all posts
Monday, September 29, 2014
Review: Rooms by Lauren Oliver
By Lauren Oliver
Published by Ecco
Publication Date: September 23, 2014
Copy received from: Publisher at BEA
My Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆
The New York Times bestselling author of Before I Fall and the Delirium
trilogy makes her brilliant adult debut with this mesmerizing story in the
tradition of The Lovely Bones, Her Fearful Symmetry, and The
Ocean at the End of the Lane—a tale of family, ghosts, secrets, and
mystery, in which the lives of the living and the dead intersect in shocking,
surprising, and moving ways
Wealthy Richard Walker has just died, leaving behind his country
house full of rooms packed with the detritus of a lifetime. His estranged
family—bitter ex-wife Caroline, troubled teenage son Trenton, and unforgiving
daughter Minna—have arrived for their inheritance.
But the Walkers are not alone. Prim Alice and the cynical
Sandra, long dead former residents bound to the house, linger within its
claustrophobic walls. Jostling for space, memory, and supremacy, they observe
the family, trading barbs and reminiscences about their past lives. Though
their voices cannot be heard, Alice and Sandra speak through the house
itself—in the hiss of the radiator, a creak in the stairs, the dimming of a
light bulb.
The living and dead are each haunted by painful truths that will
soon surface with explosive force. When a new ghost appears, and Trenton begins
to communicate with her, the spirit and human worlds collide—with cataclysmic
results.
Elegantly constructed and brilliantly paced, Rooms is an
enticing and imaginative ghost story and a searing family drama that is as
haunting as it is resonant.
Review: This melancholy gothic tale
features ghosts, and uncanny happenings, but the horrors are very much based in
reality. The ghosts are not what the Walker family is primarily haunted by, it’s
the horror and disappointments in their lives.. A sense of sadness permeates
the novel as characters, both living and dead, are forced to reveal their
secrets and deal with their grief, not only over death, but the loss of
innocence, love, potential, and hope. Loneliness is also prevalent, whether the
loneliness of death or the loneliness that comes from holding in a terrible secret.
One of my favorite aspects of this
story is the structure: the novel is divided into sections each featuring a
room of the house. Over the course of this section, the characters, whether the
remaining members of the Walker family or the two ghostly former residents, confront
the memories of events that have taken place in that room, things they have
kept hidden from their loved ones or refused to admit, even to themselves. Be
warned: suicide, domestic abuse, and child molestation are all included in the
house’s history.
As far as the characters inhabiting this
haunted house, I can’t say I found them likable but I did empathize with their
grief and understood their various ways of coping. They have all been hurt by
life and, when it comes to the Walker family, this damage has prevented them
from connecting with each other. Even the ghost characters felt very real, flawed
in a way that doesn’t leave much room for likability but is interesting and
honest.
I do have one or two nitpicks: one
being the teen girl character that appears out of nowhere so that Trenton has
someone outside of the house to interact with, the second being the suddenness with
which some later revelations are made: to the point where I was wondering if my
ARC was missing pages. But these are minor, and on the whole I found this story
engaging. There are no easy solutions to the Walker family’s problems, but they
do unburden themselves of the weight of what’s haunting them and there is a
sort of catharsis. A definite recommended read for those looking for a more
contemplative haunted house story.
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
Review: The Screaming Staircase (Lockhart & Co. #1)
By Jonathan Stroud
Published by Disney-Hyperion
When the dead come back to haunt the living, Lockwood & Co. step in . . .
For more than fifty years, the country has been affected by a horrifying epidemic of ghosts. A number of Psychic Investigations Agencies have sprung up to destroy the dangerous apparitions.
Lucy Carlyle, a talented young agent, arrives in London hoping for a notable career. Instead she finds herself joining the smallest, most ramshackle agency in the city, run by the charismatic Anthony Lockwood. When one of their cases goes horribly wrong, Lockwood & Co. have one last chance of redemption. Unfortunately this involves spending the night in one of the most haunted houses in England, and trying to escape alive.Set in a city stalked by spectres, The Screaming Staircase is the first in a chilling new series full of suspense, humour and truly terrifying ghosts. Your nights will never be the same again . . .
Review: Have you ever enjoyed a book so much that you slowed down your reading because you didn't want it to end? That was me reading The Screaming Staircase, a book so charming and entertaining I spread my reading out in order to savor it. I'm a huge fan of Stroud's Bartimaeus series and this book is just as well written, with an alternate British setting that is just as intriguing.
The three central characters are all amazingly well rounded, with strengths and weaknesses. Lucy, haunted by the trauma of a ghost hunt gone horribly wrong, finds a new friendship/family with Lockwood (an intelligent and charismatic leader who's still prone to screw-ups) and George (the hilariously acerbic researcher). Together they make an entertaining team as they work to solve a mystery, save their business, and fight some ghosts along the way. Some of the ghost sequences I found very effective in their creepiness, even for someone who loves horror novels. The mystery itself was resolved satisfactorily, but there's still plenty to learn about these characters and their world. I can't wait for the sequel.
I'll be giving this book to my nephew, who's just finished Harry Potter. I think he'll love it.
4.5 Cups of tea
This book is RIP VIII approved.
Thursday, August 29, 2013
Review: The Bone Season
But when Paige is captured and arrested, she encounters a power more sinister even than Scion. The voyant prison is a separate city—Oxford, erased from the map two centuries ago and now controlled by a powerful, otherworldly race. These creatures, the Rephaim, value the voyants highly—as soldiers in their army.
Paige is assigned to a Rephaite keeper, Warden, who will be in charge of her care and training. He is her master. Her natural enemy. But if she wants to regain her freedom, Paige will have to learn something of his mind and his own mysterious motives.
Summary from Goodreads
ARC received at BEA 2013
Review: The Bone Season has all the elements of an exciting novel set in an interesting new world, but is dragged down under the weight of its own exposition.
Scion London is the result of history diverging from our own in the time of Edward VII with people suddenly developing psychic powers. The government, in an effort to control this phenomena, created Scion citadels. There purpose is to control the population and weed out anyone with clairvoyant abilities: the people known as "voyants". There are many different kinds of voyants: soothsayers, palmists, oracles, tasseographers, julkies, with different abilities. A chart is provided at the start of the novel. In order to stay safe from the authorities many voyants join a crime syndicate with various gangs controlled by "mime-lords" who control various sectors of the city and engage in "mime-crime". One day she is caught and sent to the prison city Sheol I. Paige must now fight a war against otherworldly creatures (Emim)at the behest of a different race of otherworldly creatures (Rephaim). If all of this sounds very complicated, that's because it is.
I'm normally the last person to complain about a complicated narrative, it's just that information in this one is provided so clumsily, and it seems to go on forever, largely at the expense of character. I understand the urge to share every detail about a world you've created, but some things seemed irrelevant or overly detailed. The description of the various sectors for example. As for clumsy exposition: Paige entertains herself on a train ride by reading the information on her ID and reflecting on the history of Scion. As one does. We learn about Sheol I through Paige wandering around having conversations with various helpful but one-dimensional characters. It's very hard to care about any of this. I feel this switch in setting would have had more impact had the narrative spent more time in Scion London at first. The rules of the world must be firmly established before breaking them can have any meaning, and its hard to care about characters you know very little about. Therefore, when Paige talks about missing her gang, it's meaningless because the reader has no idea who those people are or the nature of her relationships, beyond that it's a dangerous gang that works her to exhaustion.
The story does gain more momentum around the halfway point. We learn more about Paige's Raphaim keeper, Warden, and are finally introduced to the often-referenced gang members (via dream flashback). Finally actual characters with personalties! The action picks up as well as the Emim appear and Paige begins to take action. In the beginning I would pick this book up, read a few pages, then put it down, but the last 200 pages had me riveted. That's why despite the rocky first half I will definitely be reading the sequel and do give a tentative recommendation. The world is interesting, and now that most of the heavy exposition is out of the way, I'm curious how Shannon will continue. This is a debut novel, much of the information may be relevant in one of the projected sequels, and there were enough interesting character beats and originality that I'd like to read more about them.
Recommended for: People who enjoy reading about alternate worlds with a complicated mythology, a little romance, action, and lots of exposition.
3 out of 5 bone-grubbers
Monday, August 19, 2013
Review: In the Shadow of Blackbirds
Featuring haunting archival early-twentieth-century photographs, this is a tense, romantic story set in a past that is eerily like our own time.
Review: In the Shadow of Blackbirds is a creepy, melancholy historical novel that captures a sense of death as omnipresent, likely a not-uncommon feeling to those living in the United States in 1918. It's interesting that the novel not only focuses on the effects of WWI but also on the flu pandemic, a topic I don't believe I've ever seen addressed in fiction set in this time period (aside from Downton Abbey Season 2). The sad yet creepy atmosphere of the novel is its strongest feature: bodies are piled in the streets, everyone wears masks, and even leaving your home can be life threatening. Meanwhile more and more young men are sent overseas and return home changed and broken, if they return home at all. It's no wonder people became preoccupied with death and the hope of an afterlife.
In fact I found the real-world historical elements so compelling that when the supernatural made an appearance it felt like an intrusion. However the central mystery was interesting and served as a way of tying in some poetry from WWI. The photographs were a nice touch, although not as frequent or as plot relevant as those found in Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. Overall I enjoyed this story for the mystery and the fact that Cat Winters had clearly put a lot of research behind it.
Character wise, there was one thing that bothered me a little. I liked that Mary Shelley Black was smart and knew it, and took action to solve the mystery and discover the true fate of Stephen, the boy she lost in the war. However I did feel she suffered a little from a syndrome I like to call Character Displaced In Time, where a character in a time period with a different set of social norms holds the views of a kid born in the '90s. This is usually so the reader can find the character more relatable. Of course there were progressives in that time, and I don't disagree with Mary in general but I disliked the way she looked down on every other female character for not being as awesome as she. From patronizing her aunt who works in a shipyard to criticizing the spiritualist's dress to being contemptuous of volunteers at a nursing home for soldiers based on a photograph of them pouring tea, Mary Shelley had a bit of an attitude I found hard to stomach. It which threw me out of the story every time it came up and lessoned my enjoyment of the novel overall.
3.5 haunted photographs.
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