dark Archives - The Y Logs

Yzabel / December 30, 2018

Review: Carnivore

My rating: [rating=5]

Blurb:

Meet Leander: lover, fighter, liar.

He learnt a long time ago that nothing is as intoxicating as blood. But whether it’s his or someone else’s doesn’t matter any more. There’s a mysterious pain in every muscle of his body – and it’s got so bad that he’ll do anything to escape it.

Up to now, it’s been his secret. But it’s hard to remain invisible when you leave a trail of destruction everywhere you go. So, when he comes to the attention of one of London’s most infamous criminals, Leander decides to put his appetite for violence to the ultimate test.

Let the villain win.

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

A dark thriller set in modern London, following Leander, a young man (20ish I’d say) who’s been living for years with a chronic illness that causes him constant pain, and isn’t properly recognised nor treatable. Tired of useless diagnostics and trips to the hospital, Leander has decided to give the finger to all this, and embarked on a life of drugs, sex, and mixing with more or less unsavoury characters who fuel his descent, and whose addiction he fuels in turn through constant games of sadistic/masochistic manipulation.

To be honest, I’m not sure where exactly this story sits on my spectrum. The first chapters felt rather disjointed and meandering (which in itself matched the narrator’s mental state, I’d say, since he’s pretty much doped on something or other almost all the time), and while there is a plot, it took some time to emerge and be recognisable as such. I guess it was somewhat lessened by the shock factor, and the many scenes of violence and rape (one may argue that Leander was somehow consenting, since at least some of them were the result of some of his manipulations, but that’s a very slippery slope here, so I prefer to call that rape). It felt like the characters as well as the underlying message had more potential than that, and perhaps weren’t given all the limelight and development they would’ve deserved, instead of being shadowed by the grit element.

On the other hand, said message—chronic illness, the way many of those ailments are still relatively unknown and not treated, not to mention considered with disdain by many people—was still a powerful one, carried by a poetic writing full of strange but curiously endearing metaphors. While I do not suffer from such an illness myself, I know a few people who do, and who keep struggling day after day not only to live with their symptoms, but also to make other people understand that, no, they’re not “faking it”, that it’s not merely a matter of “think positive, go out more and make more efforts”, and that because you can’t necessarily see their symptoms easily doesn’t mean they’re not there and causing constant pain.

As a result, in spite of Leander’s twisted games and of the way he treats most people, it was surprisingly easy to root for him nonetheless, because deep inside, he’s more broken than breaking, and all in all, most of his actions are the only way he’s found to bear his pain. In the end, it’s hard to know what is true and what is lies about him, whether’s he’s completely bound for a path of self-destruction or can still find a better life—his schemes sure don’t make the way easy for him.

I’m not giving the story more than 3 stars because I found it hard to really care about the characters: we get to be in Leander’s mind, but considering how much he also lies to himself, it’s difficult to really get to know him; and the rest of the cast is mostly seen as either prey or predator, as people he can use and harm or who can use and harm him. The few decent people he meets don’t necessarily last long in the movie of his life, and the ones who do have the potential of helping him destroy himself rather than bring him some healing.

Conclusion: An interesting theme, and if you want grit and rotten human beings, you’ll get that for sure, but I feel that the latter may have been just a little too much, and didn’t give the characters enough room to breathe.

Yzabel / December 31, 2016

Review: All Darling Children

All Darling Children by Katrina Monroe

My rating: [rating=2]

Blurb:

All boys grow up, except one.

On the tenth anniversary of her mother’s death, fourteen-year-old Madge Darling’s grandmother suffers a heart attack. With the overbearing Grandma Wendy in the hospital, Madge runs away to Chicago, intent on tracking down a woman she believes is actually her mother.

On her way to the Windy City, a boy named Peter Pan lures Madge to Neverland, a magical place where children can remain young forever. While Pan plays puppet master in a twisted game only he understands, Madge discovers the disturbing price of Peter Pan’s eternal youth.

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley.]

I read Barrie’s book, as well as watched Disney’s Peter Pan movie, so long ago that I honestly can’t remember all details. Still, this retelling looked interesting, and so I decided to give it a try.

Madge, Wendy’s granddaughter, lives a not-so-happy life with her grandma, and keeps trying to escape to find her mother who may or may not be in Chicago. One night, when she finally gets a chance to leave, she gets spirited to Neverland: another chance, one to learn more about her family, her mum, and everything Wendy never told her. However, Neverland quickly turns out to be more terrifying than an enchanted island full of fairies and forever-boys. Clearly not the fairy tale a lot of children and people think about when they hear the name of ‘Peter Pan’ mentioned.

There are interesting themes and ideas in this book: what the boys’ rituals involve exactly, what happened to Jane, the slow disintegration of Neverland, what happened to Hook and Tiger Lily… I’ve always liked the “Hook as an ambiguous villain” approach, and here, he’s definitely of the ambiguous kind, since it’s 1) difficult to know if he wants to help or hinder, and 2) he’s no saint, but Pan is no saint either, so one can understand the bad blood between those two.

I was expecting more, though, and had trouble with some inconsistencies throughout the story. The time period, for one: it seems Madge is living in the 1990s-2000s—welll, some very close contemporary period at any rate—, which doesn’t fit with the early-1900s of the original story. I know it’s not the main focus, yet it kept bothering me no matter what: there’s no way Wendy could still be alive, or at least fit enough to bring up a teenager, and she would’ve had to give birth to Madge’s mother pretty late in life as well. And since there’s no hint that ‘maybe she stayed in Neverland for decades, which is why Jane was born so late,’ so it doesn’t add up. Also, Michael is still alive at the end? How long has it been? He must be over 100 or something by then.

None of the characters particularly interested me either. I liked the concept of Pan as tyrant, but I would’ve appreciate more background on this. And while Madge was described as someone who was strong enough to make things change, her actions throughout the story didn’t exactly paint her in that light; it was more about the other characters saying she was like that, or telling her what she had to do, and her reacting.

I found the ending a bit of an anticlimax. Things went down a bit too easily (I had expected more cunning, or more of a fight, so to speak?)… though props on the very last chapter for the people it shows, and for being in keeping with the grim underlying themes of Neverland (kids who ‘never grow up’, huh).

Conclusion: Worth a try, but definitely not as good as what I expected from a Peter Pan retelling.

Yzabel / March 15, 2015

Review: Harrison Squared

Harrison Squared by Daryl Gregory

My rating: [rating=3]

Blurb:

Harrison Harrison—H2 to his mom—is a lonely teenager who’s been terrified of the water ever since he was a toddler in California, when a huge sea creature capsized their boat, and his father vanished. One of the “sensitives” who are attuned to the supernatural world, Harrison and his mother have just moved to the worst possible place for a boy like him: Dunnsmouth, a Lovecraftian town perched on rocks above the Atlantic, where strange things go on by night, monsters lurk under the waves, and creepy teachers run the local high school.

On Harrison’s first day at school, his mother, a marine biologist, disappears at sea. Harrison must attempt to solve the mystery of her accident, which puts him in conflict with a strange church, a knifewielding killer, and the Deep Ones, fish-human hybrids that live in the bay. It will take all his resources—and an unusual host of allies—to defeat the danger and find his mother.

Review:

(I got a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

A good story (definitely a 3.5 stars more than a 3), but one that also confirms once again that, in my opinion, “Lovecraftian influences” don’t go too well with “written for YA audience”: they need to be too downplayed, and end up too remote from the usually bleak, no-hope tone the original stories used to have, combined to the feeling of Sublime (in Burke’s meaning of this word) elicited by the appearance of Old Ones and various eldritch creatures. In turn, the novel was interesting, but…

I didn’t experience the same fascination I had when reading We Are All Completely Fine (the novel where H2 appears as an adult, along with another victim of the Scrimshander). The ingredients were here, only it didn’t seem there was much of a sense of danger, in a setting that begged anyone, reader included, to run away without ever looking back. It would have been better if it had been upped to real horror, and not, I suspect, downplayed to fit a younger public. (Especially since teenagers can very well read and appreciate genuine Lovecraft stories—I started reading those when I was 15, and it never was a problem.)

On the other hand, this book introduces characters I liked reading about. Selena was funny, yet definitely here to support her nephew in spite of the way she first appeared as “childish”: not the air-head she seemed to be, but a grown-up and serious woman, simply with a punny take on life. The kids had more depth than I would have given them credit for at first—including Lub, who kept making me smile but whose own approach on life must somehow have made lonely, in regard to his peers. And there was not a hint of romance between Harrison and Lydia (although everybody insisted she was his girlfriend, both made fun of this and dismissed it immediately). It’s refreshing enough in a category where every boy and girl always seems to find his/her “soul mate” two days after the beginning of the story.

The setting itself, Dunnsmouth, also hit the spot as far as “gloomy” and “creepy” were concerned. The strange atmosphere at school, the weird subjects (non-Euclidean geometry? Making nets? Uh…), the kids who all look like each others, the teachers with strange behaviours, the mysterious library with its equally mysterious librarian… These were well-rendered. No matter what, both in terms of settings and characters, I still found the Scrimshander as fascinating as ever. An urban-legend villain without a definite face, half-hidden under the brim of his hat, popping out of nowhere, performing gruesome magic by engraving bones with portraits of his victims… I thought he was intriguing in WAACF, and he remained fascinating here.

Conclusion: a good novel, only one I wish had upped the stakes where the horror element was concerned.

Yzabel / March 10, 2015

Review: Masters of Blood and Bone

Masters of Blood and Bone by Craig Saunders

My rating: [rating=4]

Blurb:

Holland’s a man who’s good with death. Good at death.

When his daughter goes missing, he finds himself pitted in a deadly game against the Gods themselves. Powerful enemies surround him—a changeling, a mage, and a god who wants to destroy the world.

With silver bullets in his gun and death on his mind, Holland aims to set things right…or die trying.

For the captors of Holland’s daughter, death is not only on it’s way, it’s in their very possession as Holland’s daughter isn’t just a girl…in fact, she’s barely mortal at all…

She’s Ankou, Death’s daughter, and she’s not an easy mark.

The battleground has been set, the world’s at stake, and all Hell is about the break loose.

Review:

(I got a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

This was a strange tale, full of darkness and eerily fascinating, bordering at times on grotesque regarding the way some characters were depicted. A tale of gods walking the Earth, of legendary characters come back to life, of cruel deeds from the past done for a vision that was already corrupted before it ended. A tale of craziness, of people bigger than life, of exaggeration and little things all thrown together, in which mages escape from books bound by cursed sorcery. It’s man at at its crudest, at its maddest, and also man at its greatest level, full of love and ready to shake the whole world to find the one person that matters.

I thoroughly enjoyed Holland as a character. A no-nonsense man, who knows when to kill but also when not to, who doesn’t particularly enjoy it but will not shirk away from this “duty” of his when needed. Physically, he was far removed from the typical protagonist—no rippling abs here—but he had a strong charisma of his own. I felt he was poised between his condition of someone who can see the dead, and someone who’s just trying to give his daughter a normal life, even though said daughter.

Ank, too, wasn’t what I had expected her to be, and that was for the best. The blurb was a little misleading, presenting the story using an angle that isn’t exactly the one I found while reading, and at first I believed she would be the helpless kidnapped kid, but… no. Due to her nature, she wasn’t as close to humanity as Holland, yet even though this made her harder to get attached to, it still was logical in her case. And let’s not forget The Book.

The novel also puts an interesting twist on several mythological characters (the God, the mage, what one does, what the other did). I admit that at times, I wasn’t sure why they acted the way they did; however, it was also made clear that they were mad, so this worked for me in the end. The place of the “final battle” was a tad bit cliché, but depicted in prose that made it look almost magical, if corrupted—the way the novel tackled other themes and people, mixing beauty and darkness.

On the less bright side, I may have wanted just a little more in terms of characters, as I could only really “feel” Ank and Holland; although the nature of the others made this understandable, I guess this is just one of those cases when I would’ve liked to get to know the enemy some more. And a few things in the writing tended to grate on my nerves, especially the sometimes heavy use of “…”. If you don’t mind those, good for you; I just get easily annoyed (visually) with that. That’s a somewhat minor point, though.