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Yzabel / May 20, 2016

Review: The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria

The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria by Carlos Hernandez

My rating: [rating=4]

Blurb:

A quirky collection of short sci-fi stories for fans of Kij Johnson and Kelly Link

Assimilation is founded on surrender and being broken; this collection of short stories features people who have assimilated, but are actively trying to reclaim their lives. There is a concert pianist who defies death by uploading his soul into his piano. There is the person who draws his mother’s ghost out of the bullet hole in the wall near where she was executed. Another character has a horn growing out of the center of his forehead—punishment for an affair. But he is too weak to end it, too much in love to be moral. Another story recounts a panda breeder looking for tips. And then there’s a border patrol agent trying to figure out how to process undocumented visitors from another galaxy. Poignant by way of funny, and philosophical by way of grotesque, Hernandez’s stories are prayers for self-sovereignty.

Review:

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

Well, this was a pretty original collection of stories, mixing science fiction and fantasy elements against a backdrop of Cuban culture (sometimes with clashes of various, if only generational ones) and magical realism. In this book, you’ll get research centres on space stations, aliens visiting Earth and confronted to ubuesque situations, reality TV shows about hitmen, a piano haunted by the soul of his previous owner, artificial brain implants meant to help people recover from owful brain injuries, giant pandas prodded into mating through robotics, unicorns… Basically, quite a few different ideas here, but all looking, in the end, as perfectly logical and well-integrated. Suspension of disbelief? Totally. (Yes, even when Margaret Thatcher waltzes in.)

The writing style in general was pretty good, bordering on poetic at times, making it easy to picture items (the piano), situations and places. Owing to their cultural background, some characters sometimes spoke in Spanish, or what is close to it; I can’t say whether this is annoying or not, because my own experience with that language, albeit very rusty, was still solid enough to allow me to understand.

My favourite ones:

“Homeostasis”: a take on cybernetics/neural implants and what it may mean in terms of envisioning “the soul”. When half your brain has been taken over by an eneural to help reconstruct your persona and allow you to function again as a full human being, can you be sure the person inside is still the person, and not an artificial intelligence?

“The International Studbook of the Giant Panda”: bizarre, with a dash of humour, a little disturbing, too… but surprisingly enough, past the first “WTF” moment, I realised I was enjoying this story a lot.

“The Macrobe Conservation Project”: disturbing too, in different ways. On a space station, a scientist tries to help preserve a fragile ecosystem based on parasites/symbiants living on corpses. Meanwhile, his son’s only contact with his on-planet family is through robotic versions of his mother and brother.

“American Moat”: when aliens meet the local border patrol… hilarity ensues. And yet, there is something deeply worrying in this story, because it makes you wonder: is humanity really worth it, or are we just stupid bags of meat who’d better be left to rot?

“The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria”: the eponymous title and last story of the book. After his mother’s death, a little boy desperately wants his father to be happy again instead of lonely, and turns to (dark) magic to help him. Bonus for the magical dead cat. Again, there are funny elements in there… but also reallyl touching ones. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. And with pigeons.

The other stories were good as well, and none struck me as abysmal—if I had to rate them, they were all 3 stars minimum for me.

As for the cultural backdrop, apart from a couple of heavy-handed pokes at racism, these stories had a natural flow that made the characters appear as well-integrated within their surroundings (whether contemporary Earth or space), even when those weren’t Cuba. I’m not sure how to express what I felt here, but I think it’d be something like: you don’t need to understand this different culture to enjoy these stories, and it doesn’t matter if some themes, character quirks, idioms and/or mannerisms aren’t easy to understand because they’re not yours—they’re part of each story in a natural, logical flow, and while this isn’t “my” culture, it both gave me nice insights into it, while also making me feel like there was no cultural divide. (Hopefully this makes sense.)

4 stars out of 5. I definitely recommend this book.

Yzabel / May 14, 2016

Review: Falling in Love with Hominids

Falling in Love with Hominids by Nalo Hopkinson

My rating: [rating=4]

Blurb:

Nalo Hopkinson (Brown Girl in the Ring, The Salt Roads, Sister Mine) is an internationally-beloved storyteller. Hailed by the Los Angeles Times as having “an imagination that most of us would kill for,” her Afro-Caribbean, Canadian, and American influences shine in truly unique stories that are filled with striking imagery, unlikely beauty, and delightful strangeness.

In this long-awaited collection, Hopkinson continues to expand the boundaries of culture and imagination. Whether she is retelling The Tempest as a new Caribbean myth, filling a shopping mall with unfulfilled ghosts, or herding chickens that occasionally breathe fire, Hopkinson continues to create bold fiction that transcends boundaries and borders.

Review:

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

To be honest, I had no idea who Nalo Hopkinson was until I requested this book. But I was definitely interested to read stories by an author who seemed to have an approach stemming from a different culture than mine. I didn’t know what to expect; I wasn’t disappointed.

This collection features stories inspired from various sources, situations and ideas—the author mentiones some of those before each story. Ghosts haunting a mall keep reliving their deaths. Plants that find an unusual soil to grow. Retellings of “The Tempest” and “Bluebeard”. A story set in Bordertown. Another one in a world ravaged by a strange epidemic, forcing children to band together until they all fall sick as well.

Urban fantasy, fairy tales, science fiction, magical realism: Hopkinson weaves a lot of ideas in various settings, while never losing sight of human beings: their complexity, the depth of their feelings, all their doubts and ambiguities. A mother tries to make her teenage girl realise that “taming her hair” may amount to rejecting where she came from. Fairy beings, humans and “half-breeds” mingle in Bordertown, but do they all really accept each other? Beings preying at each other, feeding on each other, going through phases of desire and guilt, of doubt and acceptance. Beings with both monstrous and loving sides, displaying alien features yet also deeply human ones, like the girl turning into a dragon, but whose deep desire remains, all in all, to be accepted by others… her own self included.

Here are the stories I liked best in this anthology:

“The Easthound”: a children-oriented vision of a post-apocalyptic future, where everybody turns into a monster when they reach puberty. A band of kids doing their best to survive, knowing all too well, though, that sooner or later they’ll have to kill one of their own, lest it kills them first.

“Shift”: a retelling of “The Tempest”, with themes revolving around identity, underlying racism, unfulfillable desires, and relationships that may be doomed to fail as soon as they are born.

“Old Habits”: ghosts trapped in the mall where they died, forced to go through their own deaths again and again, pining at the smells they can’t perceive anymore.

“A Raggy Dog, a Shaggy Dog”: pretty creepy, in a fascinating way. A woman very well-versed in orchids has developed… interesting ways to find a partner.

“Blushing”: another retelling, this time of “Bluebeard”. We all know what the new bride is going to find in that room; how she will react, though, is always another matter.

“Ours Is The Prettiest”: I’ve never read any Bordertown stories, but I don’t think the lack of background here would prevent someone from enjoying this stories. On a backdrop of enchantments, celebrations and impending danger, a woman is trying to help those around her… but is she right in doing so, or only making things worse?

“Message in a Bottle” was good, too, though I felt it lacked something—probably that something is “being turned into a novel”.

Yzabel / April 21, 2016

Review: Life After Dane

Life After Dane by Edward Lorn

My rating: [rating=4]

Blurb:

A mother’s love is undying… and so is Dane.

After the state of Arkansas executes serial killer Dane Peters, the Rest Stop Dentist, his mother discovers that life is darker and more dangerous than she ever expected.

The driving force behind his ghostly return lies buried in his family’s dark past. As Ella desperately seeks a way to lay her son’s troubled soul to rest, she comes face to face with her own failings.

If Ella cannot learn why her son has returned and what he seeks, then the reach of his power will destroy the innocent, and not even his mother will be able to stop him.

Review:

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

Well, that was quite a twisted ride here. A sort of “making of a serial killer”, seen through the eyes of the killer’s mother, Ella, as she reminisces about the past after her son’s death, while stranger and stranger events start happening around her.

Dane Peters, a serial killer known as the Rest Stop Dentist (after his places of killing and his “collection” of teeth from his victims), is gone, sentenced to death and executed. It’s time for his mother, who followed the trial for months, to go back home, where she finds shelter in religion, the only thing she has left—and even that is less than certain, for Dane’s reputation as well as an article by journalist Sven Gödel have tainted her, made her into “the killer’s mother”, and he own church may not want her anymore. So Ella tries to go on as she can, but her enemies are many, tagging her house at night and leaving accusatory articles in her mailbox, while her friends, like Talia, are few.

Enters Dane, his presence brought back through a DVD he left in Sven’s care, a video containing a last message for the person he loved most. His mother? Well… This is when Hell on Earth breaks for Ella and Sven, haunted more and more by Dane. A real ghost? A common hallucination? A hallucination that can hurt and kill, for sure. Threatened and manipulated, the mother and the journalist have no choice but to go on a sick quest of Dane’s making. But did Dane turn evil just because it was in his nature, or did someone made him into a killer?

For me, the supernatural and horror aspects were intriguing, but what interested me even more was the abuse running rampant in Dane’s family. While I would definitely disagree with anyone affirming that being abused as a child turns people evil, the fact is, abuse in any form is very, very likely to leave children (and their future adult selves) scarred, in one way or another. This novel is perhaps more a study of abuse than a ghost/horror story: a study in how a father perpetuates on his son what was done to him, on how a scared mother may choose to turn a blind eye on said abuse, thus becoming complicit in the daily torture, on how love can get horribly warped, on crappy justifications to horrible actions…

As a result, the main characters felt unpleasant yet also sympathetic, a dichotomy that isn’t so easy to achieve. Unpleasant because of their flaws, their tendency to justify them, their voluntary blindness to ugly truths, their hypocrisy, too (Ellaconsidering herself a good Christian, while letting the abuse go on). Sympathetic, because, all in all, Ella and Dane were victims first and foremost (to use the same example, Ella found refuge in her beliefs precisely because facing the truth alone was too hard and she was too scared).

And, to be honest, the teeth motif particularly struck me: losing teeth is one of my deep fears, and in general, anyway, imagining people having their teeth ripped out of their mouths is… just frightening. It hurts terribly, it touches you directly in your face, so close to the seat of your thoughts, it disfigures you, and it’s such a horrible way to bleed to death, too…

Nice touch at the very end, too, but I’m certainly not going to spoil anything.

Yzabel / December 27, 2015

Review: Marked

Marked by Sue Tingey

My rating: [rating=1]

Blurb:

With no family and very few friends, Lucky’s psychic ability has always made her an outcast. The only person she can rely on is Kayla, the ghost girl who has been with her since she was born.

But Kayla is not all that she appears.

And when Lucky is visited by a demonic assassin with a message for her friend, she finds herself dragged into the Underlands – and the political fight for the daemon king’s throne.

Lucky, trapped in the daemon world, is determined to find her way home… until she finds herself caught between the charms of the Guardian Jamie, the charismatic Daemon of Death Jinx – and the lure of finding out who she really is.

Review:

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

I almost gave up. But I don’t like not finishing a book I’m supposed to review, so I made an effort.

First reason is because I didn’t exactly get what I expected. When I got the novel, the blurb I read led me to believe the story would be focused on paranormal investigation. The actual story, though, is more of the paranormal/supernatural romance type, with very little investigating in it. Not saying this is bad per se, but I’m not a huge proponent of romance at the best of times, and this one, like many others should I say, just didn’t work.

For the record, this is the blurb I first read:

In a world filled with charlatans, Lucinda “Lucky” de Salle’s psychic ability has always made her an outcast, even as it has also made her a sought-after (if reluctant) investigator of paranormal phenomena. With no remaining family and very few friends, she has only one “person” she can rely on–Kayla, the ghost girl who has been her constant companion since she was born.

When Lucky is called in to investigate a spectral disturbance at the all-girls school she attended as a child, she isn’t surprised. She herself had had a terrifying confrontation with the troubled spirits of two girls who died in the attic room. But when Lucky goes up to the attic, she discovers that the vicious little girls are the least of the problem–a demon has been released into this world, a creature of such malevolence that even the spirits of the two girls are afraid. When the demon demands that Kayla be handed over to him, Lucky realizes that this case will be like no other she has ever experienced.

For one thing, it seems that her chatty, snarky spirit companion is not what she has always seemed to be…

Second reason is… the one that always makes me grit my teeth and feel like climbing up the curtains and scream: “Stop holding back information!” Typically goes as follows: Important Character finds him/herself in dangerous circumstances, and needs to tread on eggs; however, in order to properly tread on eggs, you obviously need background information—background information that other characters have, bur refuse to disclose for Some Reason, usually of the “you don’t want to know” or “don’t look” kind. Which is the best way of getting Important Character killed, or at least committing some Horrible Faux-Pas, but whatever, I guess we’re dealing with some Schrödinger’s Logics here.

So when half the book is filled with such inane moments, of course I’m bound to be annoyed. Lucky being a bit of a doormat in that regard, too easily allowing shifty characters to derail the conversation, didn’t help.

Third: Male Posturing. I am oh so fed up with all those hot sexy love interests immediately crapping out testosterone as soon as they end up in the same room. I can understand Lucky not wanting to be involved with guys if it’s meant to be like that all the time. Also the whole “now you bear my mark” thing, a.k.a “You’re Mine In Whatever Way I Choose, by the way I never asked your opinion before lumping this on you but it’s fine, right, I’m sure you don’t mind”. In a nutshell (I hate that expression so I’m going to use it just out of spite): doormat female character being treated like an item, and thrown under false pretenses in a world where women’s most prized value is to allow their future husbands access to positions of power (and then they can pop out kids, then get offed when they’ve outlived their usefulness).

And there you also have the plot, not making much sense, and without much happening. The last chapters became a little more interesting (although still with the whole let’s-be-sex-toys-together thing at moments when it just shouldn’t have been there); yet what led to it could probably have been avoided had Lucky been a little less dumb, and her “protectors” more forthcoming with what may be taking place behind the scenes and how to start playing the political game. Seriously, you don’t dump a person into such a situation “for your own safety”, then tell her “actually you’re in great danger here too”, then add “but I’m not going to explain to you how it works because Reasons.”

I’m afraid I’ll have to pass on the next one. Definitely not my thing.

Yzabel / November 25, 2015

Review: Deadlands: Ghostwalkers

Deadlands: Ghostwalkers by Jonathan Maberry

My rating: [rating=2]

Blurb:

The first of three media tie-in novels based on the hit RPG franchise Deadlands

From New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Maberry, the first in a thrilling series of novels based on Deadlands, a hugely successful role-playing game (RPG) set in the Weird, Weird West.

Welcome to the Deadlands, where steely-eyed gunfighters rub shoulders with mad scientists and dark, unnatural forces. Where the Great Quake of 1868 has shattered California into a labyrinth of sea-flooded caverns . . . and a mysterious substance called “ghost rock” fuels exotic steampunk inventions as well as plenty of bloodshed and flying bullets.

In Ghostwalkers, a gun-for-hire, literally haunted by his bloody past, comes to the struggling town of Paradise Falls, where he becomes embroiled in a deadly conflict between the besieged community and a diabolically brilliant alchemist who is building terrible new weapons of mass destruction . . . and an army of the living dead!

Review:

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

I used to play the Deadlands RPG when I was in high school. That was, well, long ago. Long enough for the game to be in its original iteration, no LCG or anything. Back when we used poker chips that could act as jokers, but we greedily kept them because the unused ones would turn into experience points at the end of the game. Yeah, that was quite a few years ago.

So I wanted to try and see what a novel set in the Deadlands universe was like.

Though I admit my recollections of the game are far and few between, I’m not sure the book exactly related. Some elements fitted, and had the “Weird West” feeling I tend to associate with that world, but they seemed to be thrown in more as add-ons than as true parts. (Dinosaurs, zombies, steampunk weapons, etc.) It was fun, sure, yet it also looked as too much being crammed in it… and at the same time, the novel felt too long for the story it had to tell.

It worked well enough as a “strange western”-like story in the beginning, in that the action started fast, and the tropes I was looking for were there: gunslingers, little town under the tyranny of a couple of rich white guys with their own militia of sorts, inhabitants trying to resist but being outnumbered… However, after a while, I began to lose interest, likely because of the repetitiveness of said action, and because the characters didn’t have much depths, all things considered. Grey had a troubled past… but there isn’t much more to him once this past is uncovered (he did work as a character thrown in that mess without much knowledge of what happened, as other people explaining things allowed the reader to discover them as well). Jenny was the mandatory brave female character with a shotgun, and her courage was commendable, yet out of this and her relationship with Grey, there wasn’t too much to her either. The monk was forgettable, and the villain was… gloating?

A definitely problematic character was Looks Away, the Sioux guy who happened to be part of a circus in Europe, got an education there, and now throwns in “British” slang all the time. Making him a Sioux felt more like ye olde mandatory POC than like a real person, as basically he could have been a British scholar just as well, and it wouldn’t have changed the plot in any way. (Granted, had the author gone overboard the other way, by making him a Native American cliché, it’d have been just as bad. But I believe in middle grounds.)

A good deal of the novel was also both boring and too over the top to fully belong. Characters discover awful weapon and enemies, fight them, manage to escape at the last moment, bit of deus ex machina here, rinse and repeat. (A corset stopping a bullet… Uh… Not sure about that, and if the explanation is what I think it was, it wasn’t made very clear in the end.) As for the enemies, I could do with zombies (in the Deadlandsverse? Sure!), but the vampire-witches mqde me wonder what they were doing here, and dinosaurs was too far-fetched, seemingly added to the mix just because at some point, someone must’ve said “hey, why not put dinosaurs in there, too, they’re cool.” Odd.

Writing style: long descriptions (of which I quickly get bored), and a tendency to veer into very short sentences/3-word long paragraphs that worked sometimes, and were jarring at others.

Conclusion: Some interesting ideas, but the characters need to be fleshed out, and the novel to be trimmed down when it comes to descriptions.

Yzabel / October 5, 2015

Review: Lair of Dreams

Lair of Dreams by Libba Bray

My rating: [rating=2]

Blurb:

After a supernatural showdown with a serial killer, Evie O’Neill has outed herself as a Diviner. Now that the world knows of her ability to “read” objects, and therefore, read the past, she has become a media darling, earning the title, “America’s Sweetheart Seer.” But not everyone is so accepting of the Diviners’ abilities…

Meanwhile, mysterious deaths have been turning up in the city, victims of an unknown sleeping sickness. Can the Diviners descend into the dreamworld and catch a killer?

Review:

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

Interesting premise, all the more because dreams fascinate me—lucid dreaming, the power to travel in dreams and even shape them—but possibly too ambitious a book for its own good.

The good stuff:

* Dreams and dream walkers. People who can travel in dreams and remember everything upon waking up, consciously alter others’ dreams, find the spirits of the dead to ask them for answers… Meeting other dreamers like them: Henry, Ling, Wai-Mae. The many landscapes found in there, and how they may or may not have ties to the real world. As said: fascinating.

* More bits about the bigger picture: the man in the stove pipe hat. The mysterious men in suits, all with (obviously fake) names of dead presidents. Project Buffalo. Sam’s mother.

* The last chapters, and how the characters had to basically work in both worlds to save the day.

* The sleeping sickness.

* Vivid descriptions, sometimes really creepy and eerie.

And the not so good…:

* Half the characters were left aside or weren’t terribly relevant for a good two thirds of the plot. While I found Ling interesting, and Henry got more screen time, it was frustrating to see Jericho left dangling in his museum, Will pretty much out of the picture all the time, Evie doing her radio show (then partying/getting drunk, rinse and repeat), and Theta and Memphis… just standing there in the background, looking cool? I can easily appreciate a plot with a large cast, but here it felt like the two arcs (the sleeping sickness + Project Buffalo) could have benefitted from having each their own novel.

* Everything being all over the place, including the historical themes (immigrants, racial tensions, the KKK…): interesting, yet so many things to tackle that in the end, just like the main characters, they didn’t really come together.

* Inconsistencies. Why did Ling take ages to notice what should be absolutely oblivious, considering her own abilities within dreams?

* Mabel. There was no point in having her around. The poor girl should just forget about Jericho and go live her life.

* Still a lot of 20s slang. I didn’t particularly care for it, and it was repetitive. Like a good deal of the book, in fact.

Conclusion: Really good ideas, only the execution didn’t convince me, and I felt that more threads were left dangling, without any real, solid resolution (even the sleeping sickness arc isn’t 100% resolved, with questions remaining about what caused it in the first place).

Yzabel / August 20, 2015

Review: The Gateway of Light and Darkness

The Gateway of Light and Darkness by Heather Marie

My rating: [rating=2]

Blurb:

The battle of good vs. evil wages on for Aiden Ortiz in this final installment of the Gateway Series: The Gateway of Light and Darkness. With the Dark Priest defeated, and the Brethren of Shadows refusing to forfeit calling upon the Darkness, the Brethren are determined more than ever to discover a way to banish the Men of Light for good. And as the Dark Priest’s curse invading Aiden’s veins continues to take on a life of its own, he finds himself in a standoff between his own kind, and the Brethren that want to recruit him for all the wrong reasons. Accompanied by fellow Gateway, Julie Martin, and his best friends Trevor and Evan, seventeen-year-old Aiden prepares himself for the battle of his life.

Protecting those he loves, and learning to put aside his differences for his father in order to learn the ways of the Light, Aiden begins to realize that the thing endangering their lives might not be the threat of the Brethren alone, but the thing taking shape inside of him —readying to unleash itself upon them all.

Review:

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

I still like the mythology/back story woven into this series, but… but… Seriously, this trend of ain’t-telling-you-nothing-itis has to stop. I don’t know what it’d take. I don’t know why this is still considered a good idea. It’s not. It’s not building plot, it’s forcing it down into holes that aren’t even the same shape.

So basically, Aiden makes the wrong choices (some crossing into Too Stupid To Live territory) mostly because all the characters around him who have information don’t share it with him. And when he stumbles and falls, they get all “I’m disappointed in you”, “I told you so”, “I knew it”, “I’m sorry I falied you”. When they know very well that he *wants* to get rid of his curse. Their “help” in that regard, though, falls so far from the mark that it’s not funny. I don’t buy the belief that someone has to battle against darkness alone, and if they fail, well, then it means they were doomed from the start, weren’t they? No. Maybe people wouldn’t fall if they had just the right help. There are times when it’s too much for one person to tackle. In this book, it’s one of those times. (I also don’t buy “we did it for your own good”, because had this failed, whoops, they’d likely have killed him, too bad, son.)

I guess it was almost painful, seeing how this character had to go through it half-blindedly when it mattered most. The training his father gave him, the support he was supposed to have, were only part of what he needed. What he actually needed, he didn’t really get. Thus his mistakes and wrong choices. It didn’t help that Aiden didn’t open up much about Koren, what he felt for her, thinking he could still “hear” her, etc… but what else to expect? His tentative attempts at getting answers always ended up in closed doors. Many people would give up and clam up for less than that.

It didn’t help that the story was a little slow going, and peppered with events where more than one person shone through their wrong choices. Things picked up after the 70-75% mark, though, and the ending was more enjoyable. I would’ve liked this story more, I think, if its pacing had been more balanced in that regard, and if we had gotten to see more some of the secondary characters (Aiden’s parents, for instance, or Seth). What felt slow could’ve been more exciting if they had been given some more limelight.

Not terrible per se, but not more than “just OK” either for me.

Yzabel / August 11, 2015

Review: The Suffering

The Suffering by Rin Chupeco

My rating: [rating=3]

Blurb:

The darkness will find you.

Seventeen-year-old Tark knows what it is to be powerless. But Okiku changed that. A restless spirit who ended life as a victim and started death as an avenger, she’s groomed Tark to destroy the wicked. But when darkness pulls them deep into Aokigahara, known as Japan’s suicide forest, Okiku’s justice becomes blurred, and Tark is the one who will pay the price…

Review:

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

Like the first novel in this series, I find this one hard to rate, as I liked quite a few things in it, while sighing at others. Probably my main issue with it was that it introduced plot lines, but didn’t really follow them. All the while, the main story *was* a grabbing read nonetheless.

This time, the whole narrative is in Tark’s voice, which probably was for the best: I liked the weird prose in the first book, but I’m still not too convinced by 1st-to-3rd person shifts in general, so I tend to prefer when a story sticks to one or the other. Bonus point here. (I’ve written this in more than one review: having one narrator in 1st person and the others in 3rd seems to be The Trend these past years… and I still don’t get why.)

Tark was also much less annoying here. Two years have gone by, he’s matured, he’s been taking things into his own hands, and while aware of his inherent darkness (since he helps Okiku hunting down paedophile killers and rapists), he also accepts it as part of how their relationship has evolved. Of course, everything isn’t perfect, they have their disagreements, and Tark’s starting to wonder where the line is to be drawn—is punishing killers enough, or does one have to start killing them before they actually start killing, as a preventive move?

The thing is, I would’ve liked to see this explored more in the story, as it was a great moral theme. It wasn’t, or not more than just for a couple of scenes. Too bad.

Instead, “The Suffering” goes in another direction. Not necessarily a bad one, just… different. It had its share of darkness and scary scenes as well, playing more on abilities Tark developed over the past two years, exorcising ghosts through dolls. Creepy dolls in America. Wedding dolls in Japan, as he and one of the miko from “The Girl From The Well” find themselves trapped in a nightmarish village where a ritual is waiting to be completed. It doesn’t help that Tark gets swallowed by this place while there are dozens of people around him, and nobody even notices. That kind of scene tends to both creep me and grab my attention (must be my old addiction for anything Silent Hill-like). And the village didn’t lack on the horror side, full of rotting houses, skeletons, old Japanese magic, tragic love stories gone wrong, and murdered girls intent on making trespassers suffer the way they did.

In that regard, this theme was an interesting echo and reflection on what Okiku herself used to be, after her death and her coming back as a vengeful spirit. In this second book, she was calmer, more composed, more attuned to Tark and to what had once made her human. On the one hand, it was good. On the other, she somewhat felt like a side character, in spite of Tark’s longing for her presence even after they had fought (also, this time the dynamics was changed, and he had to be strong as well, because the spirits they faced were of an element against which water—Okiku’s—was weakest). However, again, what could’ve been a thematic mirror wasn’t explored enough to my taste.

And that’s why I can’t bring myself to give 4 full stars her: while reading, I kept balancing between “this is great” and “I wish this had been developed more”. Add to this secondary characters that were nice to look at, but nothing more, especially Callie, who came along to Japan yet wasn’t really involved in anything except for the search & rescue party in the forest. Kendele was an addition I can’t really decide about: a good person, genuinely interested in Tark, yet also a plot device for him to realise what Okiku truly meant to him.

Overall, as a ghost story full of old rituals and beliefs, evil ghosts that all had their reasons to be like that, strange forest with a somber reputation, and traipsing along caves in search of the foul source of all that evil, “The Suffering” was a good read. Nevertheless, I think it missed the mark on a few but important elements.

3 to 3.5 stars.

Yzabel / August 2, 2015

Review: Little Girls

Little Girls by Ronald Malfi

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Blurb:

When Laurie was a little girl, she was forbidden to enter the room at the top of the stairs. It was one of many rules imposed by her cold, distant father. Now, in a final act of desperation, her father has exorcised his demons. But when Laurie returns to claim the estate with her husband and ten-year-old daughter, it’s as if the past refuses to die. She feels it lurking in the broken moldings, sees it staring from an empty picture frame, hears it laughing in the moldy greenhouse deep in the woods…

At first, Laurie thinks she’s imagining things. But when she meets her daughter’s new playmate, Abigail, she can’t help but notice her uncanny resemblance to another little girl who used to live next door. Who died next door. With each passing day, Laurie’s uneasiness grows stronger, her thoughts more disturbing. Like her father, is she slowly losing her mind? Or is something truly unspeakable happening to those sweet little girls?

Review:

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

An idea that seemed creepy and interesting, but that just fell flat for me.

The beginning was rather slow, with descriptions that quickly became too tedious to go through, and often the dialogues felt useless and too on the “daily conversation” side. It worked at first, to establish the normalcy of the situation (as normal as it could be considering the circumstances); however, after a while, breakfast banter and the likes didn’t bring anything to the story, and were tiring to go through. I skimmed some of those parts, hoping to get to the next creepy bit, since creepy is what I wanted.

Too many of the characters’ actions and thoughts were told, rather than shown. Although it’s never easy when dealing with psychological aspects, as obviously a lot is internalised and cannot necessarily be “shown”, here I never felt close to the characters, as if I was meant to stand remote, and watch them without “feeling” anything for them—especially when flashbacks were concerned. At times, they would come out of nowhere, at length, and then mentioned again later to other characters, almost in passing: maybe it would’ve worked better for me if I could have read them at those moments, when they were more relevant, and not at some random point in the first chapters. When Laurie’s secrets started surfacing (what Sadie did to her, for instance), I couldn’t bother caring anymore. I could muster neither much interest nor compassion for Laurie or Ted—who had a knack also for coming up with his own crap when it wasn’t needed. (Seriously? You really had to tell ease your guilt by telling your wife, when clearly she was going through her father’s death and potentially getting crazy?)

The ending was frustrating. It hinted at a specific event, but without spelling it, and echoed in this way the fact that no answer was given as to whether Laurie was actually crazy or not. I still don’t know now if she imagined everything, was just stressed out, was haunted by an actual ghost, was plain crazy… In this regard, a more definite ending would have been more satisfying for me. It seemed to me that there wasn’t that much of a plot, and that the “ghost” didn’t do much for most of the story except just be there. Not to mention the twist about Laurie’s father, coming when I didn’t care anymore. I admit I finished reading because I expected an answer… and I never really got one.

I liked the setting, though: the creepy house with its old furniture, the well and the dilapidated glass house that were clearly a catastrophe in the making, the photographs of little girls kept in an album, what Laurie discovered in the garage. Still, it wasn’t enough to sell me on this novel. 1.5 stars.

Yzabel / June 28, 2015

Review: Thirteen Days of Midnight

Thirteen Days of Midnight by Leo Hunt

My rating: [rating=4]

Blurb:

When Luke Manchett’s estranged father dies suddenly, he leaves his son a dark inheritance. Luke has been left in charge of his father’s ghost collection: eight restless spirits. They want revenge for their long enslavement, and in the absence of the father, they’re more than happy to take his son. It isn’t fair, but you try and reason with the vengeful dead.

Halloween, the night when the ghosts reach the height of their power, is fast approaching. With the help of school witchlet Elza Moss, and his cowardly dog Ham, Luke has just thirteen days to uncover the closely guarded secrets of black magic, and send the unquiet spirits to their eternal rest. The alternative doesn’t bear thinking about.

Review:

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

3.5 stars. Entertaining and somewhat funny at times, while still conveying a sense of danger—alright, maybe not terribly frightening per se for me, as I don’t frighten easily when reading books, but I think it has the right potential nonetheless. Half the Host at least was creepy in more ways than one, from the Shepherd with his glasses to the Prisoner with his shears… and even the Innocent, for the questions he raised (who would leash a *baby* as their pet ghost, really?!). The Host wasn’t a bunch of good guys, apart from a couple, and even those remained on the fence and never said the whole truth, only intervening at a “right” moment that could’ve been just a tad bit sooner for good measure.

As I’m a sucker for necromancy in general, of course I couldn’t help but look for the questions it raised. And there were several. The baby I mentioned, for starters. Why Luke’s father turned to such a type of magic, and why he bound such a large Host, when nothing at first indicated he even needed one (this is explained later in the book). Whether Luke would accept this part of his inheritance and be lured towards a desire for power, or try to remain who he was and have a normal life. Choices to make, and forgiveness. This wasn’t just about getting rid of a bunch of ghosts, but also choosing to protect or to condemn other people.

I liked the dynamics between Luke and Elza—there’s a smidge of a budding romance in there, one that doesn’t detract from the plot, and develops slowly: good! Luke realised he couldn’t clutch forever to his little life as one of the “popular” crowd, in the face of something much biger and dangerous. Elza was resourceful, and overall a nice person, trying to help people who had been treating her like an outcast just because she didn’t want to fit their mould. Holiday, too, was a bit of an ambiguous person: picking her friends among the popular ones and discarding the others, but not to the extent of becoming a mean girl. She was barely more than a crush, yet at least she was a believable one. As for the lawyer, well… Even though you don’t get to see him much, he was perfectly cast in his role.

Oh, and Ham. Ham the deerhound. A very short part of the novel is actually from his point of view, and that was quite funny. It would’ve been annoying if it had been longer; kept to a few paragraphs, it wasn’t, and definitely made me smile.

Other characters were less defined, unfortunately: Mark, Kirk, even Luke’s mother, who remains ill/asleep for most of the novel. That last one was a bit of a letdown, as in turn, it was difficult to properly get to know her and to share Luke’s worries for her for any other reason than “she’s his mom”.

Sometimes Luke’s reactions made me cringe, as he seemed to switch from one to the other real quick. It didn’t happen that often, and it could be explained by panic and worry; only it made me wonder why he’d get such reactions. (For instance, when it’s been made clear that you’re haunted by ghosts and that those have put a certain person in a coma, dragging that person to a hospital won’t be very useful, especially not considering all the people who die in a hospital.) A couple of times, too, I picked some absolutely obvious clues that totally eluded the characters (re: the familiar); on the other hand, all things considered, maybe that’s a case of being too genre-savvy on my part, so I can’t very well hold it against characters who were either totally new to the supernatural, or barely fledglings (Elza admitted herself she was self-taught).

There was a slight lull in the middle while the characters were powerless and trying to figure out what to do—not that Luke’s father had been very helpful to begin with. They came up with an interesting idea in the end, so I forgave them.

The writing was OK, nothing exceptional, nothing blatantly annoying either. It should flow nicely enough for the intended audience. (Also, my Kindle copy was a bit oddly formatted; however, this is an ARC, so likely to change.)

Conclusion: 3.5 stars rounded to 4, because in spite of the points I mentioned, I pretty much enjoyed it. The story is also self-contained, yet open-ended enough to leave room for a sequel (someone’s bound to come back and collect their dues here, not to mention what may or may not happen between Luke and Elza, and how their fellow pupils would react to it).