horror Archives - Page 6 of 7

Yzabel / September 19, 2014

Review: Amity

My rating: [rating=1]

Summary:

For fans of Stephen King and American Horror Story, a gruesome thriller suggested by the events of the Amityville Horror.

Inspired by a true-crime story of supernatural happenings and gory murders, Amity spans two generations and beyond to weave an overlapping, interconnected tale of terror, insanity, danger, and death.

Review:

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

I watched the Amityville movie some 20 years ago, and never read the book, so I won’t comment much on how faithful to the original story this novel is… or how it diverged from it. I remember some elements (the red room, characters always waking up at the same time, the door banging, the “healer” character being thwarted…), and I think they were used in ways both similar and different. Is it a good or a bad thing? I don’t know. For me, it felt appropriate, at least. I tend to like cameos, winks at other works of literature, and so one.

I liked how both narrators’ voices were clearly distinct, not only because of the fonts used, but simply because their tone, their ways of thinking, were different enough. Gwen is more fragile, while Connor’s instability is expressed more violently. Gwen is more intuitive, and Connor “colder”. In fact, his case was pretty easy to figure out, and his narrative reflected his problems fairly well.

This said, while I enjoyed the setting, the writing itself unfortunately got on my nerves to such an extent that it ruined my reading experience. Why? Too much hammering, too much repetitions (she was shot in the head, I mean, you know, go away crazy, I mean, she was shot in the head, she was shot IN THE HEAD). I get why they were here, emphasising Gwen’s unstable mental state and Connor’s sociopathic tendencies, but I have an aversion to heavy-handed writing styles, the ones that tell me what I should feel, instead of subtly hinting at it. Apart from the standard sentences (see above), often the story made a point of repeating the same event several times, as if to flash a huge neon sign above it, in case someone would have missed it. Example:

My mother stood in the doorway of the sewing room.
My mother stood, head cocked slightly, looking quizzical, in the doorway of the sewing room.
She wasn’t directly behind me[…]
She hadn’t been behind me at all.
She’d been standing in the doorway of the sewing room.
My mother had been standing, not behind me, but in the doorway of the sewing room.
She’d been standing in the doorway of the sewing room this whole time.

Frankly, this doesn’t induce fear in me. This just makes me cringe and roll my eyes, thinking, “OK, I GET IT.” I don’t like being openly manipulated. Suspension of disbelief, for me, rests on a text’s ability to make me forget the ropes, so that I end up realising that I’ve been led all the way without realising it. Conversely, I don’t react well to techniques that poke me without subtlety in the right direction. It’s like someone’s grabbing my head, looking at me in the eyes and screaming: “Look, this is scary! I’m repeating it because you’re meant to feel it! Are you scared yet, Huh? HUH?” As said, I get why such effects were used, Gwen and Connor being damaged characters. But the way they were handled just irked me. Sometimes, it happens. And it’s too bad.

The novel also borrows from a few other works (notably “Carrie”, for the stones), and I don’t think that was a good idea. It came out of nowhere as far as Gwen was concerned, and though it had its use, it just felt like a cop-out to me. And not frightening either. Mostly, I didn’t find this novel scary. It lacked subtlety to achieve that, and the last chapters were too muddled to give it a proper ending.

I had high hopes for this story, and I wish I had liked it, but alas, this didn’t come to pass. 1.5 stars.

Yzabel / August 31, 2014

Review: Ash and the Army of Darkness

Ash and the Army of Darkness by Steve Niles

My rating: [rating=2]

Summary:

The battle has been fought and won. Ash battled and defeated the Deadite image of himself and saved the world. Now all he wants to do is get home and have a normal life. Too bad he messed up the Book of the Dead incantation. Will Ash ever escape the land of the Deadites? Will he ever find his girl? Will he ever remember the last part of the incantation? Now an army of unbelievable horrors rules the land and only Ash can annoy them!

Review:

(I received a copy of this book from NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

This volume collects issues 1 to 8 of the comics, which pick up right after where the Army of Darkness movie left off—at least, if memory serves right. Ash is pulled back in 1300 to face more Deadites and a renewed threat, this time because the one he left the Book of the Dead with might not have been the best choice. (Not that anyone would have been a best choice: it seems the book has a will of its own.)

I found the book somewhat close to what I remember of the movies—Ash being both badass and somewhat stupid at times (the Faceless Man part is quite a good example of that, and I can say I wanted to facepalm just as much as the other character involved). However, I regularly felt that more could have happened, and that the plot didn’t move that fast, although the action scenes were drawn in a fairly dynamic way. The PDF copy I got had very clear lettering; on the other hand, some panels appeared a little bit blurry, and I don’t know if this is on purpose, or just a scanning problem due to this being an ARC. As for Ash, sometimes he really looked like the one from the movies, but not always; that was disconcerting.

An OK read for me, though a somewhat forgettable one. I’m not sure I’d pick the next volume.

Yzabel / August 24, 2014

Review: Darkness

Darkness by Erin Eveland

My rating: [rating=1]

Summary:

One Girl. One Boy. And the Masters of Darkness. See the Shadow Creatures. They are everywhere. But you can’t run from the shadows or the Masters who control them.

Catherine has been born with a supernatural power called Darkness. The Masters of Darkness have found her and it’s just a matter of time before someone claims her.

An Interactive Novel
A QR Code starts the beginning of each chapter connecting the reader to specific art or music that ties into the mood and setting of the novel. Using the quick response code in print and eBook formatting, Darkness incorporates visual and sound to heighten the reading experience.

Review:

(I got this book from NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

Try as I might, I couldn’t get into this novel, in spite of a theme that seemed appealing to me. Although I liked the idea of “interactive” parts (codes/links leading to songs, videos, pictures.. that had artistic value regarding the various chapters).

I think the main reasons to this are that:

1) I couldn’t connect with the characters at all. Perhaps because I’m not currently in the mood for Bleak Life Is Bleak worlds, where nothing the people do seem to be able to get them out of their misery? Catherine had a strong streak, but in spite of that, I found her extremely passive, basically waiting on a guy that wouldn’t look at her so often, just because they had been friends for a couple of years before that. This, in itself, was partly understandable (wanting to escape a horrible life with someone you love), except that he didn’t show any inclination to do so, she never tried to prod and see how he was feeling about it, and so it looked less like hope than unfounded infatuation.

2) The romance between Nathan and Catherine: no chemistry to speak of. Again, with more action and less wishful-thinking-in-my-little-corner on their part, it could have worked.

3) The whole Darkness/Light conflict and mythology was confusing. It made more sense when Jorgen explained it, but this comes rather late in the story. In the end, I’m still not sure if Catherine is Darkness or Light or a mix of both, nor what exactly Artros wanted of her.

4) The story lacked editing. A few typos here and there, I can live with. However, the story had a tendency to go into rambling, about the thoughts of this or that character, as if at some point, several versions of those thoughts had been written, then left all together because choosing one turned too hard to do. It slowed down the pace and caused me to start skimming after a while.

5) Nothing much happens before the 65-68% mark. The characters are unhappy, then unhappy again, then something makes them more unhappy… And I just can’t believe that after Kathy’s episode with the hospital, no social worker pulled Cathering out of there. I know the CPS don’t have the most brilliant reputation, but that was stretching it. (And why didn’t Catherine do anything on her own, anyway? It’s not like she was staying with her mother out of love and respect, her basic needs weren’t even met, and frankly, considering her place and living style, going to some orphanage for two years might not even have been the worst option here.)

On the good side, the idea of Darkness as a power, of controlling Shadow Creatures, was interesting. Just not used here in a way that would have made me like this story.

1.5 stars.

Yzabel / August 3, 2014

Review: Blackout

Blackout by Tim Curran

My rating: [rating=3]

Summary:

In the midst of a beautiful summer, in a perfectly American suburban middle-class neighborhood, a faraway evil is lurking, waiting to strike the unsuspecting residents.

First come the flashing lights, then the heavy rains, high winds, and finally a total blackout. But that’s only the beginning…

When the whipping black tentacles fall from the sky and begin snatching people at random, the denizens of Piccamore Way must discover the terrifying truth of what these beings have planned for the human race.

Review:

(I got an ARC of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

3.5 stars, not sure yet if I’ll round it up to 4, but nonetheless a story that I enjoyed reading. I’m not familiar with this author, but I’d definitely check more from him later on.

Blackout focuses on a series of strange disappearances and occurrences in the suburgs at night. After people went about their day and evening the normal way (BBQ with the neighbours, one too many drinks), the night turns out to be a long, nightmarish one. Darkness fills the sky. Lights remain turned out. No phone, no internet. Nobody knows what’s going, except that one by one, the inhabitants vanish, as if out of thin air. Or maybe not? Maybe it has something to do with the eerie lights in the sky, or with the creepy black cables dangling from above, coiling in seemingly harmless masses, until someone touches them, that is.

The characters in this story are of the Everyday Joe type: the sexy wife who feels her beauty capital running out; the sturdy, protective husband; the political activist prone to ranting about the people in charge’s lack of response; the narrator, a normal guy in so many ways; an old lady going on dementia, but with surprising bolts of insight at time; a mother and her children. Cliché in a way, sure, yet also easy to place, a set of characters in which, somehow, a lot of people could find a bit of themselves.

The setting, the way things happened, were quite stifling, and in spite of the place itself being a town, it felt as if everyting was going on behind closed doors. The people couldn’t escape, even by car, and every attempt was sure to be met with something, whether gruesome outcome or within-an-inch escape. This kept on enhancing the fact that they were on their own, and made it seem less and less likely that help would come. Feelings of pressure and horror were in for me here, and I was glad for my nerves I mostly read it during the day, not at 2 am. Also, nobody gets a free pass here, with death looming above everybody.

I would’ve liked to see a few more happenings, I think. A few more confrontations between the characters, which in my opinion would really have cranked up the stifling factor up a notch—I sometimes felt that tension arosen leading up to more cracks in the facade, but then one of the involved characters would be removed, and the tension fell down. Probably a matter of personal preference here. Probably also due to the story’s length (it’s a novella, after all).

Overall, a fairly decent story that falls both in the horror and science fiction genres. It’s not the most original one, it didn’t blow my mind, but I liked reading it.

Yzabel / July 29, 2014

Review: Horrorstör

Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix

My rating: [rating=3]

Summary:

Something strange is happening at the Orsk furniture superstore in Columbus, Ohio. Every morning, employees arrive to find broken Kjerring wardrobes, shattered Brooka glassware, and vandalized Liripip sofa beds clearly, someone or something is up to no good.

To unravel the mystery, five young employees volunteer for a long dusk-till-dawn shift—and they encounter horrors that defy imagination. Along the way, author Grady Hendrix infuses sly social commentary on the nature of work in the new twenty-firstcentury economy.

A traditional haunted house story in a contemporary setting (and full of current fears), Horrorstör comes conveniently packaged in the form of a retail catalog, complete with illustrations of ready-to-assemble furniture and other, more sinister accessories. We promise you’ve never seen anything quite like it!

Review:

(I got an ARC through Edelweiss, in exchange for an honest review.)

3.5 stars. An interesting enough blend, in my opinion, of an IKEA/retail parody coupled with horror/ghost stories elements, though after a while, I wished said blend had been more balanced (hence my rating: I would have liked this book more if it had been the case, I think).

It plays on several tropes typical of the genre (people isolated in a haunted place, with dangerous things happening as soon as they’re separated, etc.), while also offering tongue-in-cheek criticism of large retail stores practices. One thing I really liked, both as a reader and as a graphic-designer, was that the book itself reads like an IKEA catalogue, complete with square format, furniture illustrations, pseudo-Swedish names. Those schemas also gradually shift from innocent-looking retail items to contraptions and devices that appear in the real horror part, and the change was subtle enough to make me at unease without realising, for a few seconds, what was actually wrong.

The characters weren’t too likeable in the beginning, in a cardboard-cut way, but some of them I started to appreciate after a while, and they displayed growth as well: nobody could get out unchanged from such an experience, after all, and the changes seemed to me both traumatising as well as positive.

Oddly enough, or maybe not, the serious horror part didn’t really cut it for me. It was definitely creepy, with vivid descriptions, and definitely fit what I’d expected from a horror story. In fact, I’m of a mind to dub it “Silent Hill meets IKEA”, in that the places the characters are trapped in aren’t merely frightening: they also toy with their psyches. However, I realised I missed the funnier tone from earlier chapters. The book cover made me expect more satire, and so, in the end, I felt a little disappointed in that regard.

Nevertheless, I’d recommend this story. It was entertaining, had its really scary parts, and its ending provides a conclusion to the night’s events while still leaving room for enough speculation—not a cliffhanger, but reader’s imagination, which is something I always appreciate.

Yzabel / July 21, 2014

Review: We Are All Completely Fine

We Are All Completely Fine by Daryl Gregory

My rating: [rating=4]

Summary:

Harrison is the Monster Detective, a storybook hero. Now he’s in his mid-thirties and spends most of his time not sleeping.

Stan became a minor celebrity after being partially eaten by cannibals. Barbara is haunted by the messages carved upon her bones. Greta may or may not be a mass-murdering arsonist. And for some reason, Martin never takes off his sunglasses.

Unsurprisingly, no one believes their horrific tales until they are sought out by psychotherapist Dr. Jan Sayer. What happens when these likely-insane outcasts join a support group? Together they must discover which monsters they face are within and which are lurking in plain sight.

Review:

(I got an ARC of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

This was an intriguing and gripping novella, tackling a question that is probably seldom asked: what of the somewhat normal people in paranormal/supernatural stories, the ones who aren’t the powerful mage detective or powerful vampire or whatever, yet have also dealt with their share of anything-but-normal situations? What of those people’s psyche, can they ever go back to a semblance of normalcy, and how? In an attempt to reclaim their selves, five people gather around Dr. Jan Sayer to talk through their problems, some more reluctantly than others, gradually revealing what exactly happened to them, and how it left them scarred. Because no matter what befell them, whether true monsters or human cannibals or other deranged kinds of minds, it was just the right amount of too bizarre for them to find solace in traditional therapy, which basically ended up in a bunch of souls suffering without ever being able to truly express how… until the group started meeting, that is.

The world building rests on a lot of common themes, some well-known (Lovecraftian mythos—the town of Dunnmouth being obviously reminiscent of Innsmouth), some vague enough that they could be placed basically in any series, and all morbidly fascinating in their own ways. The family of human cannibals that fed off Stan’s and his friends’ bodies, for instance, is pretty close to typical stories of that kind (like the Sawney Bean clan). The Scrimshander could be a regular psychopath touched with a bit of sight… or something else altogether. Greta’s fiery little problem could be interpreted as a variety of spirits. As a result, I felt it allowed the story to fit a lot of potential settings, and gain a kind of legitimacy.

Though overall, I liked it a lot, I remain slightly frustrated. I wanted this book to be longer. I loved its premise, but I felt that it sometimes came short, and wasn’t exploited enough (especially when the doctor was concerned). The ending, too, left me somewhat dissatisfied, in that it seemed to leave the characters too close to where they started. In part, its outcome fits the bleak theme of the book as a whole, yet I couldn’t help but wonder if it went “far enough”.

A note about the style, quite atypical: a blend of first person plural (highlighting the sense of a collective, of a group) and third person. I thought it worked, but it could just as well detract from one’s enjoyment of the story. Be warned.

Nevertheless, I’d still recommend this novel no matter what.

Yzabel / July 20, 2014

Review: The Girl From The Well

The Girl from the Well by Rin Chupeco

My rating: [rating=3]

Summary:

You may think me biased, being murdered myself. But my state of being has nothing to do with the curiosity toward my own species, if we can be called such. We do not go gentle, as your poet encourages, into that good night.

A dead girl walks the streets.

She hunts murderers. Child killers, much like the man who threw her body down a well three hundred years ago.

And when a strange boy bearing stranger tattoos moves into the neighborhood so, she discovers, does something else. And soon both will be drawn into the world of eerie doll rituals and dark Shinto exorcisms that will take them from American suburbia to the remote valleys and shrines of Aomori, Japan.

Because the boy has a terrifying secret – one that would just kill to get out.

The Girl from the Well is A YA Horror novel pitched as “Dexter” meets “The Grudge”, based on a well-loved Japanese ghost story.

Review:

(I got an ARC of this book through Edelweiss, in exchange for an honest review.)

Not so much “terribly scary” for me in the end, in that I don’t scare easily, yet fascinating nonetheless for its depiction of ghosts, the appearance they have after death, and the imagery it conjured. I could fairly easily picture Okiku, the murderers she targeted and got revenge on in place of the dead children, said children literally latched onto those men’s necks and linked to their limbs by spirituals cords… And the woman in black… well, all right, that one I’d definitely attempt to draw someday, although I’m not sure I could do her justice. I think the way the story was told, too, contributed to this: somewhat cold and detached, and special, because it’s a strange mix of omniscient and first person point of view (the story’s told by Okiku herself, who’s able to observe other characters and their reactions, and sense their thoughts and feelings). In any other story, it probably wouldn’t have worked for me; here, it did, because it seemed to fit with the ghost’s paradigm. I don’t know if other readers in general would like it, but as far as I’m concerned, it partook the fascination I had for this novel, through descriptions that were just the right length and just suggestive enough (all the more for the intended YA audience), without falling into the realm of “too much”.

The Girl From The Well is loosely based on a well-known Japanese legend, that of a servant girl who worked for a lord, and was tasked with keeping ten precious plates; she was tricked into believing she had lost one of them, and was put to death for her “carelessness”. As a result, she became a vengeful spirit who drove her former lord to death—and the number 9 sends her spirit into a frenzy. This was nicely reflected in the book, in that Okiku tends to count whatever she sees (people, items…), and the accursed number indeed makes her react violently. Forever detached from both human world and and elusive afterlife, she can only watch, in between enacting revenge throughout the world on people who’ve killed children, but were never punished for their bad deeds. The Smiling Man, especially, was of quite a scary persuasion—I find smiles way more frightening than other expressions whenever such characters are concerned.

However, this isn’t exactly Okiku’s story. Hers was already written, already told, and this is more a “what would happen some three hundred years later, how would such a vengeful spirit evolve with time.” Partly to her own surprise, she finds herself drawn to Tarquin, a boy with strange tattoos, and whose fate is doomed to be a dark one if what plagues him isn’t destroyed in time. (Note: there’s no romance involved—a very welcome element in my opinion. It would just’ve been weird and misplaced in such a story.) Odd things happen around Tark, his own mother has been locked in an institution and has tried to kill him several times, and he just doesn’t understand much to what’s happening. But other people slowly start to notice the presence that haunts him, those people being mostly Okiku and his cousin Callie, and it’s up to them to try and understand what his problem his, and how to solve it, which involves going back to his roots.

On the downside, I wasn’t too convinced by the characters in general, in that they seemed more driven by the plot than people with their own lives. Okiku’s involvement was also somewhat problematic, since she was mostly a watcher and didn’t act as much as I expected her to. I think I would’ve liked her nature as a vengeful spirit to show through more than it did; for instance, one of the vengeance scenes made me feel like it had been put there as some kind of reminder, and not really as part of the plot. There was also one huge blunder that could’ve been easily avoided if only one of the characters had spoken out loud about a specific event, yet didn’t for… no reason? I don’t mind characters making honest mistakes, but not when the latter are the product of unexplained reasoning.

Overall, I had a hard time putting this book down, and remained fascinated, though with hindsight, those aspects I mentioned prevented me from rating it higher. (3.5 stars)

Yzabel / June 2, 2014

Review: The Girl With All The Gifts

The Girl With All The Gifts by M.R. Carey

My rating: [rating=5]

Summary:

Melanie is a very special girl. Dr Caldwell calls her ‘our little genius’.

Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class. When they come for her, Sergeant keeps his gun pointing at her while two of his people strap her into the wheelchair. She thinks they don’t like her. She jokes that she won’t bite, but they don’t laugh.

Melanie loves school. She loves learning about spelling and sums and the world outside the classroom and the children’s cells. She tells her favourite teacher all the things she’ll do when she grows up. Melanie doesn’t know why this makes Miss Justineau look sad.

Review:

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

4.5 stars—to be honest, 3rd person present narration is something I don’t exactly like, and at times (mostly when I picked up the book again after something or other made me stop reading) it made it difficult to get back into it. However, I suspect in this case, it’s really a matter of personal preference, and every time the story pulled me back in in seconds, anyway.

There’s something both deeply disturbing and fascinating to this novel. At first sight, it looked like a “traditional” enough post-apocalyptic story, with humans surviving in locked-down places while looking for a way to go back to how the world used to be, or at least, find a way to keep strong and going. But as I went into the story, more and more little differences appeared. Maybe not that many, maybe not enough to warrant a giant “this is so different” label… yet still taking me gradually further from what I expected.

There’s a survival trek through zombie-infested territory. There’s a scientist doing research, hoping to find a vaccine. There’s the hard-boiled soldier and the rookie, protecting the group. There’s a civilian who wants to believe in something better. There’s the kid, Melanie, strange Melanie, so smart yet also so innocent, because she’s never seen the world outside of the classroom. This somewhat dysfunctional group is complemented by both strength and dysfunctionality within the characters themselves—though it’s hard to describe without walking into, well, spoiler-infested territory.

Caldwell is partly doing her research out of spite, the 25th scientist on a list of 24 “chosen ones” who were supposed to work to eradicate the plague; even though she’s dying, she keeps going on, wanting to understand, wanting her life to have a meaning, wanting to succeed where the others failed, and somehow “playing god” regarding her “specimens”. Justineau, who acts fiercely protective towards the kids in general, and Melanie more specifically, has a selfish reason of her own to do so, maybe to try and find absolution. Born in a shitty world, Kieran had a shitty childhood which he wanted to escape, yet never really managed to. Parks comes out as quite an asshole, but he’s seen his share of horrors, and his distrust of Melanie is understandable. As for Melanie herself, her innocence combines with an acute awareness of her own nature, and the world and people who’ve been shaping her don’t realise until it’s too late what her existence really means.

There are so many things I’d like to say about this novel; doing so, though, is likely to make me spoil another reader’s pleasure.

I liked the idea behind the “zombie plague”: not a virus, not a pathogen, but a fungus—it’s the first time I see this angle played in a story, at least. The science describing its behaviour seemed believable to me (I’m not a scientist, however, so I could be mistaken). Being a fungus, another aspect plays a part, on top of blood and bites: spores, and that was ended up being the most frightening, because can the surviving humans really escape such tiny particles? Avoiding zombie encounters, wearing armour, establishing secured aread: comparatively, this is easy. But spores? The whole concept also led to eerie descriptions that left me with a feeling of unease mixed with fascination: a silent city, its streets littered with corpses long decayed, out of which strange fungi sprouted, growing, growing, and who knew when they’d reach maturity, and start spreading those dreadly spores?…

The ending fascinated me as well, because of all it implied, all the unspoken outcomes it could lead to, all its ambiguity and imperfection. The hope it carries is a very twisted one, perhaps even a false one. (What follows is major spoiler material, so don’t click if you don’t want to know.)

This ending? Irony to the power of ten. Melanie has basically become Caldwell, drawing from the scientist’s example, shaping the world according to her own belief of what will be the best solution, engaging a procedure with no turning point, and using the hands of a dying man to do so. She has trapped Helen in a role she, herself, thought as a perfect existence: the kind teacher guiding the kids, the teacher whose lessons were always the best part of the week… but is this what Helen wanted and liked? Not so much. The specimen has become the dispassionate scientist, while the protector has become the prisoner. The base is gone. The men are gone. The children are a new form of life, but one that doesn’t lend itself to much hindsight yet, and even with guidance and teaching, who can tell whether they’ll succeeded in making a new world?

So, I loved this book. So much that I was willing to forgive its narration (something that might have broken another story for me). Unless zombie stories gross you out, I’d definitely recommend it.

Yzabel / May 18, 2014

Review: Dollhouse

Dollhouse by Anya Allyn

My rating: [rating=3]

Summary:

Dress-up turns deadly. . .

When Cassie’s best friend, Aisha, disappears during a school hike, Cassie sets off with Aisha’s boyfriend Ethan and their best friend Lacey, determined to find her. But the mist-enshrouded mountains hold many secrets, and what the three teens discover is far more disturbing than any of them imagined: beneath a rundown mansion in the woods lies an underground cavern full of life-size toys and kidnapped girls forced to dress as dolls.

Even as Cassie desperately tries to escape the Dollhouse, she finds herself torn between her forbidden feelings for Ethan, and her intense, instinctive attraction to The Provider, a man Cassie swears she has known before…

Because Cassie’s capture wasn’t accidental, and the Dollhouse is more than just a prison where her deepest fears come true—it’s a portal for the powers of darkness. And Cassie may be the only one who can stop it.

Review:

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

A likeable story—on the creepy side, that is, but if I didn’t want creepy, I wouldn’t have applied for this book, right? I liked the atmosphere conveyed through the book, at least when it came to the house itself and its inhabitants (this isn’t a spoiler; the title gives it away, after all). It was oppressive, left little doubt as to the stifling nature of the place, and the toys as well as Jessamine’s behaviour were definitely elements of unease. I was never scared, to be honest, but this doesn’t necessarily means “Dollhouse” won’t be scary to other other people. In any case, in terms of imagery, those were themes I could relate to.

The plot is kind of strange. It’s both a good and a bad thing in my opinion. On the one hand, it fits the overall atmosphere; on the other, sometimes things were a little confusing. At first I thought it may be a purely horror/mystery story, then different supernatural elements creepeed in. I was all right with that, though: it may be part of what the book was meant to achieve, depending on how one considers it, and it also contributed to the characters’ confusion. So, for me, it worked.

I found the pacing somewhat uneven. The first chapter pulled me in, then the next ones were slower, and I think some of the scenes in the dollhouse itself dragged a little. Again, this is one of those double-edged aspects in my opinion: slowing down the story, yet also reflecting the bleak existence of the “dolls”, the day-to-day routine under Jessamine’s guidance (if one can call that guidance…), the world being narrowed down to a few rooms only, with few activities available. So, slow in pacing, but fitting in theme.

I didn’t find the characters really memorable, and was mostly interested in the atmosphere and in looking for hints about the bigger picture, I admit. Cassie was kind of bland, Ethan and Aisha as well, and Lacey was easily forgotten. This is probably one of the weakest points in this book: I kept feeling that those friends didn’t really care about each other. That they went looking for Aisha not in the hopes of finding her alive, but of removing suspicion from Ethan. That they didn’t have much in common, and didn’t look like a strong enough group to go through the hassle of camping in the mountains at night to search for the missing girl. Cassie leaves Lacey[Lacey (hide spoiler)] alone in a creepy place, then oh, surprise, she’s missing as well. Rule number one: you never, ever leave someone alone. Not in such a setting.

The romance… Meh. I wasn’t convinced. But then, I seldom am.

The book ends on a cliffhanger that may very well be quite annoying. You can somewhat imagine what will happen, but if it’s still rather abrupt, and felt more like a chapter was missing, rather than a real ending.

I’m giving it 3 stars because I really enjoyed the theme, the atmosphere, the imagery it all evoked. I found it easy to picture the rooms, the clothing, to imagine what the dolls’ life was like. If one is looking for strong characters, though, perhaps this isn’t the right book.

Yzabel / October 6, 2013

Review: Engines of the Broken World

Engines of the Broken World by Jason Vanhee

My rating: [rating=4]

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

Summary:

Merciful Truth and her brother, Gospel, have just pulled their dead mother into the kitchen and stowed her under the table. It was a long illness, and they wanted to bury her—they did—but it’s far too cold outside, and they know they won’t be able to dig into the frozen ground. The Minister who lives with them, who preaches through his animal form, doesn’t make them feel any better about what they’ve done. Merciful calms her guilty feelings but only until, from the other room, she hears a voice she thought she’d never hear again. It’s her mother’s voice, and it’s singing a lullaby. . . .

Review:

This book left me with an odd feeling, but in a good way: the kind of feeling you cannot define, that puts you at unease, yet that at the same time keeps you enthralled and fascinated. The story is wrapped in a definite atmosphere of raw despair and claustrophobia, and its characters, although bleak-looking at first, become easier to understand chapter after chapter. Merciful is a simple girl who’s led a simple life in a simple place, under the guidance of her mother and the Minister; Gospel, her elder brother, tries to be The Man in the family, although he is only three years older and is still a scared child in some ways. Their only comfort, after their mother’s death and even before that, is the Minister itself, and that is to say a lot, since it’s not even a human being they’re dealing with, but an animal.

While you hope until the end that everything will be fully resolved, there’s that nagging little voice in you that keeps saying “it cannot end well”; part of you wants to ignore it, and part of you wants it to be right, because every element—that lost, backward village, its few remaining inhabitants, the mysterious fog, the setting itself—almost screams for it. In a way, it is terrifying. In another, it is alright. You might never know what really happened, how it really ended, if it really ended… but somehow, it’s alright. And I wouldn’t have wanted it to be otherwise.

I also liked how the author managed to toy with the minds of his characters, by also toying with the reader’s mind. More than once I wondered if I had read too fast, if I hadn’t paid attention enough to this or that detail, or if maybe I had put a finger on a plot hole; then, a few chapters later, it all made sense again, and I realised I had been fooled—again, in a good way.

My biggest qualm, I think, would be that the characters weren’t fast enough when it came to understanding a specific turning point in the plot, and might have been able to understand sooner the whole deal about the machine. But at the same time… could they? Considering the life they had been leading until now, and their present circumstances, wasn’t it normal for them to be a little slow on the taking? I can’t make a proper decision about that. All things considered, I enjoyed this book no matter what.