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Reading Challenge: R.eaders I.mbibing P.eril (RIP) IX
Hello my lovely readers! Many book bloggers are already familiar with Carl of Stainless Steel Droppings’ RIP Challenge. For those who aren’t familiar, it’s a reading challenge, covering the months of September and October, during which you read delightfully creepy / horror books to go along with the feelings of fall. The books can be in any of the following genres:
Mystery.
Suspense.
Thriller.
Dark Fantasy.
Gothic.
Horror.
Supernatural.
Or anything sufficiently moody that shares a kinship with the above.
There are multiple different ways to participate, including reading short stories and watching movies, plus there’s now a readalong you can participate in. I’ve participated twice before purely in the book reading portion of the challenge, and that’s what I’m going to be doing again. I’ll be doing Peril the First, for which you read four books that broadly fit in any of the categories above.
Books I already own that I could select for the challenge are listed below. I’d love to hear from you in the comments if there’s one you’d particularly like to recommend to me from my list!
- A Banquet for Hungry Ghosts by Ying Chang Compestine
- Barely Breathing by Michael J. Kolinski
- Beverly Hills Demon Slayer by Angie Fox
- Brains: A Zombie Memoir by Robin Becker
- Breed by Chase Novak
- Cycle of the Werewolf by Stephen King
- Deadtown by Nancy Holzner
- Disclosure by Michael Crichton
- From a Buick 8 by Stephen King
- I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead by E. A. Aymar
- The Keep by Paul F. Wilson
- The Kitchen Witch by Annette Blair
- Nightmare Fuel: Volume 1 by Bliss Morgan
- The Shimmer by David Morrell
- Smokin’ Six Shooter by B. J. Daniels
- A Spell of Winter by Helen Dunmore
- State of Decay by James Knapp
- Still Missing by Chevy Stevens
- The Strain by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan
- Tales of the Chtulhu Mythos by H. P. Lovecraft
- Unshapely Things by Mark Del Franco
- The Veiled Mirror: The Story of Prince Vlad Dracula’s Lost Love by Christine Frost
- The Walking Dead, Volume 16 by Robert Kirkman
- Wanted Woman by B. J. Daniels
I think I should be able to find four books from a list that large, don’t you?
PS If anyone is doing the short story challenge, I have two short stories published that fit within the parameters (and are free!). Also, my published novel fits into the challenge too. Check them all out on my publications page.
Book Review: Death Island by Joan Conning Afman
Summary:
In future America the prisons are so overcrowded that the government needed to come up with a new idea. So they started sending the worst criminals to a remote island to live out their lives (or deaths). Naturally, this Lord of the Flies style punishment is also a nationally televised weekly reality tv show. When Danny is wrongfully accused of serial killing five women with an axe, including his own wife, this reality tv show becomes his stark….reality.
Review:
At this point, the idea of a reality televised punishment type thing run by the government is relatively passe. A trope of the dystopian scifi genre, even. However, Afman does bring a unique twist to this basic idea that keeps the book fresh and engaging.
For instance, the inhabitants of the island are not forced to pit themselves against each other. They sort of naturally divided up into the Village, the Tribe, and the loners. The Village consists of those men who feel badly about their crimes and are trying to live out their lives with some semblance of normalcy. A lot of them have formed couples and shacked up. The Tribe are basically the psychopathic killers who periodically get drunk on their homemade rum and randomly attack others on the island. The loners are relatively self-explanatory. Having this type of conflict naturally happen instead of forcing it upon the participants is a nice throwback to The Lord of the Flies.
On the other hand, the fact that Danny proclaims his innocence and is innocent makes the plot far less appealing to me. There’s no real moral ambiguity at the center that would drive the reader to question her own belief system or the concept of justice in general. It’s odd to me that Afman chose Danny as the main character when there is a minor character on the island who admittedly committed a crime but perhaps for the right reasons. This is where the meat of a real story would lie. Choosing Danny instead makes it sort of like those tv shows people put on for background noise but don’t pay any real attention to.
Of course, Danny is not the entire plot. We also have the minister’s wife, Charlie, who firmly believes in Danny’s innocence and works toward freeing him. She provides the connection to the real axe murderer and a really odd romance layer to the book. Seeing the program how those in America do is interesting, but wouldn’t it be more interesting to travel around to various viewing parties in the US? Perhaps to those who are blood-thirsty to the casual viewers to family members of those sent to the island, even. Instead, every time Charlie’s plot interrupts Danny’s it’s distracting.
All of those things said, it’s not that the book is badly written. It’s not. It’s just not amazing or even very good. It’s just good. It entertains for a couple of hours and then is easily tossed aside. Perhaps for some people that’s enough. Personally I was hoping for more.
Overall, I recommend this book to those who are a fan of the concept looking for a light, quick read.
3 out of 5 stars
Source: LibraryThing’s EarlyReviewers
Book Review: Timeless Trilogy, Book One, Fate by Tallulah Grace (Series, #1)
Summary:
Kris is a successful video editor in Charleston, South Carolina with two best friends she’s made her own family with. She has a beautiful beach house and a loving fluffy cat named Pegasus. She also just so happens to be precognitive. Her visions have never been about herself until she starts sensing that she is being watched, receiving late night phone calls, and finding flowers left at her house and on her car. Increasingly, she realizes she is in danger, and right then her old college flame moves in next door.
Review:
This is an interesting mix of suspense, romance, and paranormal that keeps the reader guessing and interested and shows promise in the writer.
Kris’s life prior to the stalking is relatable to the modern female reader. She has a core group of good friends, a pet she loves, a career that is solid but not yet stellar, and her dream home. All that she is missing is the man. The added touch of her visions gives her that extra something special, but her visions are not over the top. She can’t control when they come or what they’ll show her, so she treats them more as an odd talent. This keeps the heroine from being over-inflated, which is nice. The love interest, Nick, is cute without being a god and kind without being perfect. He’s a good guy with flaws, ie, the ideal love interest in a romance that we’ve, alas, been seeing less and less of lately.
The plot is this book’s strong point. It is scary and suspenseful, but still believable. No characters make obvious stupid mistakes that would make the reader scream at them, and let’s just say, Kris is no Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but she also isn’t a weak, quivering Disney princess. Kris is neither a super-hero nor incredibly weak, which is just the kind of heroine we need more of in literature.
All of that said, Grace shows promise as a writer, but she still needs to work on her craft. Her plot structure is excellent, but she frequently shows instead of tells. Similarly, she struggles a bit when first introducing a character, often falling back on the beginner writer’s method of explaining hair and eye color before anything else. Similarly, the book needs more editing for simple grammar, spelling, and typos. The book does not read like a strong author’s work, but it also is still enjoyable. I am left wanting to find out about the romances of Kris’s friends Cassie and Roni, but I am also hoping that the writing that goes along with creative plots improves in the next two books.
Overall, if you are a fan of suspenseful romance with a dash of the paranormal and don’t mind a bit of showing instead of telling, this book is a fun way to pass a few hours, particularly for the low cost of 99cents.
3 out of 5 stars
Source: Kindle copy from author in exchange for my honest review
Book Review: King of Paine by Larry Kahn
Summary:
Frank Paine was a Hollywood A-list leading man until he let the woman he loved deal with a BDSM scandal in the news on her own, thereby destroying her career and saving his. The guilt got to him, so he ended up leaving Hollywood and joining the FBI in an effort to bring justice to the world. His first case in the Rainbow Squad, however, involves not child rape or molestation but adult, BDSM style rape-by-proxy, and his ex-girlfriend is a suspect. Meanwhile, a former Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who’s been drowning his sorrows in alcohol finds himself swept up into the life of Angela del Rio and and discovering rumors of a place called The River.
Review:
I’m of two minds about this book. I felt the need to find out what happened in the end, but I also didn’t enjoy the meat of the story very much. It’s kind of like when you find yourself watching a marathon of The Biggest Loser and wondering why, exactly, it matters to you who gets voted off when the show get so many nutrition and exercise facts wrong and why exactly are the competitors cut off from their family anyway? Actually, it’s exactly like that.
Kahn builds suspense well. He’s clearly paid attention to just how much and how often to ramp up the violence and intrigue to keep a reader reading. I also appreciated the two separate story-lines that then intertwined. Of course, the reader knows they’re going to intertwine, but how is not immediately obvious. That was a nice touch.
Kahn also moves smoothly between real life dialogue and the chats on an online BDSM website that are a key part of the investigation. It was definitely crucial to a modern story to include the internet, and he switches between real life and the internet quite well.
That said, other crucial parts of telling a story fell flat for me. Kahn does not write women well. On looking back, it is evident that women in his story are divided into the classic dichotomy of angel or whore. There is no real room for three-dimensional characterization, making mistakes, or understandable motivations. For instance, Paine’s ex goes from calling her brother to threaten to kill him to getting back together within a week. That’s, um, fast? Similarly, although Kahn slips back and forth easily between Paine’s and Roger’s perspective, he never shows any of the women’s perspectives, even though they are the ones being raped, beaten, tricked, used, and abused. I can understand using the perspective of an FBI agent, but why couldn’t the second perspective have been Angela instead of Roger? Or why couldn’t he have made the reporter a woman? Regardless, none of the women in the story were believable, real characters.
Similarly, I was ultimately disappointed with who the perpetrator of the crime ultimately is. Without spoiling it, suffice to say the choice is stereotypical, bordering on racist. It was a choice lacking in creativity or sensitivity.
Overall, although the suspense reeled me in, the content of the story left me with a sour taste in my mouth. I suppose if you want a junk food style suspense, or if the negatives I pointed out wouldn’t bother you, you may enjoy this book. Those looking for thought-provoking, realistic suspense should look elsewhere, however.
3 out of 5 stars
Source: Kindle copy from author in exchange for my honest review
Book Review: The Mummy by Anne Rice (series #1)
Summary:
Julie Stratford’s father is a retired shipping mogul who now spends his time as an archaeologist in Egypt. He uncovers a tomb that claims to be that of Ramses the Damned, even though his tomb was already found. Everything in the tomb is written in hieroglyphs, Latin, and Greek, and the mummy is accompanied by scrolls claiming that Ramses is immortal, was a lover of Cleopatra, and can and will rise again.
Review:
I’m a fan of Anne Rice. Her Vampire Chronicles are a lovely mix of social commentary, lyrical writing, and all the best tropes of genre fiction, so I was excited to stumble upon a cheap copy of The Mummy in the second-hand section of the bookstore. I wanted to love it. I really did. But whereas the Vampire Chronicles contain valid social commentary, this is so stereotypical of mainstream romance a la The Titanic that I was sorely disappointed.
Again, the language is lyrical and gorgeous. Rice without a doubt is incredibly talented at putting together sentences that read like a rich tapestry of old. There is no rushing to get the story out as is so often found in more modern writing. It’s fun to indulge the senses and oneself in the scene.
The plot, though, ohhhh the plot. It’s so mainstream romance it hurts. And yes, I know I read and enjoy (and write) paranormal romance, but the difference is that PNR is oftentimes tongue in cheek. It knows it’s ridiculous and over the top and doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s meant to be fun and ridiculous. Rice is being serious here, however, and that’s why the plot bugs me. Let’s look at it for a second, shall we?
Girl is engaged to the perfect guy but she mysteriously does not think she loves him. Girl meets immortal man who is so hot he would be voted hottest man alive every year forever. Girl immediately “falls in love” with immortal guy. Girl ditches perfect guy for immortal guy. Girl and immortal guy have lots of the hot hot sex. Immortal guy causes a series of unfortunate events in pursuit of his ex-lover. Girl insists she still loves guy but cannot forgive him. Girl decides life is pointless without immortal guy. Girl attempts to kill herself. Immortal guy saves her. Girl forgives immortal guy. Girl agrees to become immortal too. Yay happily ever after.
Like….just……there are SO MANY parts of that that piss me the fuck off. So. Many. The main female character (Julie) is a shallow douchebag in spite of claiming to be a modern, progressive woman. She does not “fall in love” with Ramses. She falls in lust with him. He gives her tinglies in all the right places. He ditches her to pursue his ex-lover (Cleopatra). She, at first, rightfully tells him she can’t forgive him for that. But then she TRIES TO OFF HERSELF. OVER A GUY. And the only reason she doesn’t succeed is douchebag saves her. I just….wow. Not a plot I can respect. Not a plot that gives us anything different from the patriarchal rigamarole so often forced upon us. Anne Rice. I am disappointed.
Then there’s the odd eurocentrism at work in the narration. Even though Julie’s father loves Egypt and Ramses is, um, Egyptian, for some reason everything modern and European is what is impressive to everyone. I suppose I could maybe (maybe) forgive that, but then there’s the fact that the elixir that makes people immortal also for some mysterious reason turns their brown eyes blue. So nobody immortal has brown eyes. I don’t think I need to unpack why that’s offensive for you all. I trust you can figure that out for yourselves. Unlike Rice.
So, essentially, The Mummy is a beautifully written book that is destroyed by a kind of offensive, all-too-common plot and Eurocentrism. Even beautiful writing can’t overcome that.
3 out of 5 stars
Source: Harvard Books
This work by Amanda Nevius is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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